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ESSAYS 

IN 

POPULAR PHILOSOPHY 



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3Sp tfce ^ame 9lut!)Dr 

THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY, 
"vols 8vo. New York: Henry Holt & Co. London : 
Macmillan & Co. 1890. 
PSYCHOLOGY: BRIEFER COURSE CTEXT BOOK). 
J mo New York: Henry Holt & Co. London: 
Macmillan & Co. 1892. 
TME WILL TO BELIEVE, AND OTHER ESSAYS 
m POPULAR PHILOSOPHY. 

Lo New "ork, London, Bombay and Calcutta: 
Longmans, Green & Co. 1897. 
HUMAN IMMORTALITY: TWO SUPPOSED OB- 
JECTIONS TO THE DOCTRINE. 
S Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. x8 9 8. 
ta. « TO TEACHERS ON PSYCHOLOGY: AND 
T ^0 STUDENTS" ON SOME OF LIFE'S IDEALS. 
m» r, Vork • Henry Holt & Co. London, 
rm bay N andC Y aSia H LonUs,Oreen & Co. I S 9 9 

THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
A STUDY IN HUMAN NATURE 
Gifford Lectures delivered at Edinburgh* xgwgo,. 
8vo. New York, London, Bombay and Calcutta. 
Longmans, Green & Co. 1902. 

ON PHILOSOPHY. Calcutta- Long- 

New York, London, Bombay and Calcutta, i^ong 

mans, Green & Co. i9°7- 
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New York, London, Bombay, and Calcutta: Long- 
mans, Green & Co. i9°9- 
THE MEANING OF TRUTH: A SEQUEL TO 
L^yXS:, Bombay.and Calcutta: Long- 
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THF LITERARY REMAINS OF HENRY JAMES. 
Edhed with an Introduction, by Wiuum Jambs. 
with Prrtrait. Crown 8vo. Boston: Houghton 
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/ 

THE WILL TO BELIEVE 

AND OTHER ESSAYS IN 
POPULAR PHILOSOPHY 

BY WILLIAM JAMES 




NEW IMPRESSION 



LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 

FOURTH AVENUE &* 30TH STREET, NEW YORK 

LONDON, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA 

1912 






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**©> 



Copyright, 1896 
By William James 



First Edition, February, 1897, 
Reprinted, May, 1897, September, 1897, 
March, 1898, August, 1899, June, 1902, 
January, 1903, May, 1904, June, 1905, 
March, 1907, April, 1908, 
September, 1909, December, 1910, 
November, 1911, November, 1912 



MC»a 



T 



THE -PLIMPTON 'PRESS 
[W • D -O] 

HORWOOD.MASS'U'S'A 



To 

My Old Friend, 

CHARLES SANDERS PEIRCE, 

To whose philosophic comradeship in old times 
and to whose writings in more recent years 
I owe more incitement and help than 
I can express or repay. 



PREFACE. 



AT most of our American Colleges there are Clubs 
formed by the students devoted to particular 
branches of learning ; and these clubs have the laud- 
able custom of inviting once or twice a year some 
maturer scholar to address them, the occasion often 
being made a public one. I have from time to time 
accepted such invitations, and afterwards had my dis- 
course printed in one or other of the Reviews. It 
has seemed to me that these addresses might now be 
worthy of collection in a volume, as they shed explana- 
tory light upon each other, and taken together express 
a tolerably definite philosophic attitude in a very un- 
technical way. 

Were I obliged to give a short name to the attitude 
in question, I should call it that of radical empiri- 
cism, in spite of the fact that such brief nicknames 
are nowhere more misleading than in philosophy. 
I say 'empiricism,' because it is contented to regard its 
most assured conclusions concerning matters of fact 
as hypotheses liable to modification in the course of 
future experience ; and I say ' radical,' because it treats 
the doctrine of monism itself as an hypothesis, and, 



viii Preface. 

unlike so much of the half-way empiricism that is 
current under the name of positivism or agnosticism 
or scientific naturalism, it does not dogmatically af- 
firm monism as something with which all experience 
has got to square. The difference between monism 
and pluralism is perhaps the most pregnant of all the 
differences in philosophy. Prima facie the world is 
a pluralism ; as we find it, its unity seems to be that 
of any collection ; and our higher thinking consists 
chiefly of an effort to redeem it from that first crude 
form. Postulating more unity than the first experi- 
ences yield, we also discove* ^re. But absolute unity, 
in spite of brilliant dashes in its direction, still remains 
undiscovered, still remains a Grenzbegriff. " Ever not 
quite " must be the rationalistic philosopher's last con- 
fession concerning it. After all that reason can do 
has been done, there still remains the opacity of the 
finite facts as merely given, with most of their pecu- 
liarities mutually unmediated and unexplained. To 
the very last, there are the various * points of view ' 
which the philosopher must distinguish in discussing 
the world ; and what is inwardly clear from one point 
remains a bare externality and datum to the other. 
The negative, the alogical, is never wholly banished. 
Something — "call it fate, chance, freedom, sponta- 
neity, the devil, what you will " — is still wrong and 
other and outside and unincluded, from your point of 
view, even though you be the greatest of philosophers. 
Something is always mere fact and givenness ; and 
there may be in the whole universe no one point of 
view extant from which this would not be found to 
be the case. " Reason," as a gifted writer says, " is 



Preface. ix 

but one item in the mystery; and behind the proud- 
est consciousness that ever reigned, reason and won- 
der blushed face to face. The inevitable stales, while 
doubt and hope are sisters. Not unfortunately the 
universe is wild, — game-flavored as a hawk's wing. 
Nature is miracle all ; the same returns not save to 
bring the different. The slow round of the engrav- 
er's lathe gains but the breadth of a hair, but the 
difference is distributed back over the whole curve, 
never an instant true, — ever not quite." 1 

This is pluralism, somewhat rhapsodically ex- 
pressed. He who takes : vhis hypothesis the no- 
tion that it is the permanent form of the world is 
what I call a radical empiricist. For him the crudity 
of experience remains an eternal element thereof. 
There is no possible point of view from which the 
world can appear an absolutely single fact. Real pos- 
sibilities, real indeterminations, real beginnings, real 
ends, real evil, real crises, catastrophes, and escapes, 
a real God, and a real moral life, just as common- 
sense conceives these things, may remain in empiri- 
cism as conceptions which that philosophy gives up 
the attempt either to ' overcome ' or to reinterpret in 
monistic form. 

Many of my professionally trained confreres will 
smile at the irrationalism of this view, and at the 
artlessness of my essays in point of technical form. 
But they should be taken as illustrations of the radi- 
cally empiricist attitude rather than as argumenta- 
tions for its validity. That admits meanwhile of be- 

1 B. P. Blood : The Flaw in Supremacy : Published by the Author, 
Amsterdam, N. Y., 1893. 



x Preface. 

jng argued in as technical a shape as any one can 
desire, and possibly I may be spared to do later a 
share of that work. Meanwhile these essays seem 
to light up with a certain dramatic reality the atti- 
tude itself, and make it visible alongside of the higher 
and lower dogmatisms between which in the pages of 
philosophic history it has generally remained eclipsed 
from sight. 

The first four essays are largely concerned with 
defending the legitimacy of religious faith. To some 
rationalizing readers such advocacy will seem a sad 
misuse of one's professional position. Mankind, they 
will say, is only too prone to follow faith unreason- 
ingly, and needs no preaching nor encouragement in 
that direction. I quite agree that what mankind at 
large most lacks is criticism and caution, not faith. 
Its cardinal weakness is to let belief follow recklessly 
upon lively conception, especially when the conception 
has instinctive liking at its back. I admit, then, that 
were I addressing the Salvation Army or a miscella- 
neous popular crowd it would be a misuse of oppor- 
tunity to preach the liberty of believing as I have in 
these pages preached it. What such audiences most 
need is that their faiths should be broken up and ven- 
tilated, that the northwest wind of science should get 
into them and blow their sickliness and barbarism 
away. But academic audiences, fed already on sci- 
ence, have a very different need. Paralysis of their 
native capacity for faith and timorous abulia in the 
religious field are their special forms of mental weak- 
ness, brought about by the notion, carefully instilled, 
that there is something called scientific evidence by 



Preface. xi 

waiting upon which they shall escape all danger of 
shipwreck in regard to truth. But there is really no 
scientific or other method by which men can steer 
safely between the opposite dangers of believing too 
little or of believing too much. To face such dangers 
is apparently our duty, and to hit the right channel 
between them is the measure of our wisdom as men. 
It does not follow, because recklessness may be a 
vice in soldiers, that courage ought never to be 
preached to them. What should be preached is 
courage weighted with responsibility, — such courage 
as the Nelsons and Washingtons never failed to show 
after they had taken everything into account that 
might tell against their success, and made every pro- 
vision to minimize disaster in case they met defeat. 
I do not think that any one can accuse me of preach- 
ing reckless faith. I have preached the right of the 
individual to indulge his personal faith at his personal 
risk. I have discussed the kinds of risk ; I have con- 
tended that none of us escape all of them ; and I 
have only pleaded that it is better to face them open- 
eyed than to act as if we did not know them to be 
there. 

After all, though, you will say, Why such an ado 
about a matter concerning which, however we may 
theoretically differ, we all practically agree? In this 
age of toleration, no scientist will ever try actively to 
interfere with our religious faith, provided we enjoy 
it quietly with our friends and do not make a pub- 
lic nuisance of it in the market-place. But it is just 
on this matter of the market-place that I think the 
utility of such essays as mine may turn. If reli- 



xii Preface. 

gious hypotheses about the universe be in order at 
all, then r the active faiths of individuals in them, 
freely expressing themselves in life, are the experi- 
mental tests by which they are verified, and the only 
means by which their truth or falsehood can be 
wrought out. The truest scientific hypothesis is that 
which, as we say, ' works ' best ; and it can be no 
otherwise with religious hypotheses. Religious his- 
tory proves that one hypothesis after another has 
worked ill, has crumbled at contact with a widening 
knowledge of the world, and has lapsed from the 
minds of men. Some articles of faith, however, 
have maintained themselves through every vicissi- 
tude, and possess even more vitality to-day than ever 
before : it is for the ' science of religions ' to tell us 
just which hypotheses these are. Meanwhile the free- 
est competition of the various faiths with one another, 
and their openest application to life by their several 
champions, are the most favorable conditions under 
which the survival of the fittest can proceed. They 
ought therefore not to lie hid each under its bushel, 
indulged-in quietly with friends. They ought to live 
in publicity, vying with each other ; and it seems to 
me that (the regime of tolerance once granted, and 
a fair field shown) the scientist has nothing to fear for 
his own interests from the liveliest possible state of 
fermentation in the religious world of his time. Those 
faiths will best stand the test which adopt also his hy- 
potheses, and make them integral elements of their 
own. He should welcome therefore every species of 
religious agitation and discussion, so long as he is will- 
ing to allow that some religious hypothesis may be 



Preface. 



Xlll 



true. Of course there are plenty of scientists who would 
deny that dogmatically, maintaining that science has 
already ruled all possible religious hypotheses out of 
court. Such scientists ought, I agree, to aim at im- 
posing privacy on religious faiths, the public mani- 
festation of which could only be a nuisance in their 
eyes. With all such scientists, as well as with their 
allies outside of science, my quarrel openly lies ; and 
I hope that my book may do something to persuade 
the reader of their crudity, and range him on my side. 
Religious fermentation is .always a symptom of the in- 
tellectual vigor of a society ; and it is only when they 
forget that they are hypotheses and put on rational- 
istic and authoritative pretensions, that our faiths do 
harm. The most interesting and valuable things about 
a man are his ideals and over-beliefs. The same is 
true of nations and historic epochs ; and the excesses 
of which the particular individuals and epochs are 
guilty are compensated in the total, and become pro- 
fitable to mankind in the long run. 

The essay ' On some Hegelisms ' doubtless needs 
an apology for the superficiality with which it treats a 
serious subject. It was written as a squib, to be read 
in a college-seminary in Hegel's logic, several of whose 
members, mature men, were devout champions of the 
dialectical method. My blows therefore were aimed 
almost entirely at that. I reprint the paper here (albeit 
with some misgivings), partly because I believe the 
dialectical method to be wholly abominable when 
worked by concepts alone, and partly because the 
essay casts some positive light on the pluralist-em- 
piricist point of view. 



xiv Preface. 

The paper on Psychical Research is added to the 
volume for convenience and utility. Attracted to this 
study some years ago by my love of sportsmanlike fair 
play in science, I have seen enough to convince me 
of its great importance, and I wish to gain for it what 
interest I can. The American Branch of the Society 
is in need of more support, and if my article draws 
some new associates thereto, it will have served its 
turn. 

Apology is also needed for the repetition of the 
same passage in two essays (pp. 59-61 and 96-7, 
100-1). My excuse is that one cannot always ex- 
press the same thought in two ways that seem equally 
forcible, so one has to copy one's former words. 

The Crillon-quotation on page 62 is due to Mr. 
W. M. Salter (who employed it in a similar manner 
in the ' Index' for August 24, 1882), and the dream- 
metaphor on p. 174 is a reminiscence from some novel 
of George Sand's — I forget which — read by me thirty 
years ago. 

Finally, the revision of the essays has consisted 
almost entirely in excisions. Probably less than a 
page and a half in all of new matter has been added. 

Harvard University, 

Cambridge, Massachusetts, 
December, 1896. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGB 

The Will to Believe i 

Hypotheses and options, I. Pascal's wager, 5. Clifford's 
veto, 8. Psychological causes of belief, 9. Thesis of the 
Essay, 11. Empiricism and absolutism, 12. Objective certi- 
tude and its unattainability, 13. Two different sorts of risks in 
believing, 17. Some risk unavoidable, 19. Faith may bring 
forth its own verification, 22. Logical conditions of religious 
belief, 25. 

Is Life Worth Living 32 

Temperamental Optimism and Pessimism, 33. How reconcile 
with life one bent on suicide ? 38. Religious melancholy and its 
cure, 39. Decay of Natural Theology, 43. Instinctive antidotes 
to pessimism, 46. Religion involves belief in an unseen exten- 
sion of the world, 51. Scientific positivism, 52. Doubt actuates 
- conduct as much as belief does, 54. To deny certain faiths is 
logically absurd, for they make their objects true, 56. Conclu- 
sion, 61. 

The Sentiment of Rationality 63 

Rationality means fluent thinking, 63. Simplification, 65. 
Clearness, 66. Their antagonism, 66. Inadequacy of the ab- 
stract, 68. The thought of nonentity, 71. Mysticism, 74. Pure 
theory cannot banish wonder, 75. The passage to practice may 
restore the feeling of rationality, 75. Familiarity and expect- 
ancy, 76. ' Substance,' 80. A rational world must appear con- 



<** 



xvi Contents. 

gruous with our powers, 82. But these differ from man to 
man, 88. Faith is one of them, 90. Inseparable from doubt, 95. 
May verify itself, 96. Its role in ethics, 98. Optimism and pes- 
simism, 101. Is this a moral universe ? — what does the problem 
mean? 103. Anaesthesia versus energy, 107. Active assumption 
necessary, 107. Conclusion, no. 

Reflex Action and Theism 11 1 

Prestige of Physiology, 112. Plan of neural action, 113. God 
the mind's adequate object, 116. Contrast between world as 
perceived and as conceived, 118. God, 120. The mind's three 
departments, 123. Science due to a subjective demand, 129. 
Theism a mean between two extremes, 134. Gnosticism, 137. 
No intellection except for practical ends, 140. Conclusion, 142. 

The Dilemma of Determinism 145 

Philosophies seek a rational world, 146. Determinism and 
Indeterminism denned, 149. Both are postulates of ration- 
ality, 152. Objections to chance considered, 153. Determinism 
involves pessimism, 159. Escape via Subjectivism, 164. Sub- 
jectivism leads to corruption, 170. A world with chance in it is 
morally the less irrational alternative, 176. Chance not incom- 
patible with an ultimate Providence, 180. 

The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life . 184 

The moral philosopher postulates a unified system, 185.-;, ii- 
gin of moral judgments, 185. Goods and ills are created by 
judgments, 189. Obligations are created by demands, 192. The 
conflict of ideals, 198. Its solution, 205. Impossibility of an 
abstract system of Ethics, 208. The easy-going and the strenu- 
ous mood, 211. Connection between Ethics and Religion, 212. 

Great Men and their Environment 216 

Solidarity of causes in the world, 216. The human mind ab- 
stracts in order to explain, 219. Different cycles of operation in 
Nature, 220. Darwin's distinction between causes that produce 
and causes that preserve a variation, 221. Physiological causes 
produce, the environment only adopts or preserves, great men, 
225. When adopted they become social ferments, 226. Messrs. 



Contents. xvii 

Spencer and Allen criticised, 232. Messrs. Wallace and Gry- 
zanowski quoted, 239. The laws of history, 244. Mental evo- 
lution, 245. Analogy between original ideas and Darwin's 
accidental variations, 247. Criticism of Spencer's views, 251. 

The Importance of Individuals 255 

Small differences may be important, 256. Individual differ- 
ences are important because they are the causes of social 
change, 259. Hero-worship justified, 261. 

On some Hegelisms 263 

The world appears as a pluralism, 264. Elements of unity in 
the pluralism, 268. Hegel's excessive claims, 272. He makes of 
negation a bond of union, 273. The principle of totality, 277. 
Monism and pluralism, 279. The fallacy of accident in Hegel, 
280. The good and the bad infinite, 284. Negation, 286. Con- 
clusion, 292. — Note on the Anaesthetic revelation, 294. 

What Psychical Research has Accomplished . . 299 

' The unclassified residuum, 299. The Society for Psychical 
Research and its history, 303. Thought-transference, 308. 
Gurney's work ^09. The census of hallucinations, 312. Me- 
diumship, 313. , Hie 'subliminal self/ 315. 'Science' and her 

-mnter-presumptions, 317. The scientific character of Mr. 

^yers's work, 320. The mechanical-impersonal view of life 
versus the personal-romantic view, 324. 



Index 3 2 9 



ESSAYS 

IN 

POPULAR PHILOSOPHY. 



THE WILL TO BELIEVE. 1 

IN the recently published Life by Leslie Stephen of 
his brother, Fitz-James, there is an account of a 
school to which the latter went when he was a boy. 
The teacher, a certain Mr. Guest, used to converse 
with his pupils in this wise : " Gurney, what is the 
difference between justification and sanctification? — 
Stephen, prove the omnipotence of God ! " etc. In 
the midst of our Harvard freethinking and indiffer- 
ence we are prone to imagine that here at your good 
old .orthodox College conversation continues to be 
somewhat upon this order; and to show you that 
we at Harvard have not lost all interest in these vital 
subjects, I have brought with me to-night something 
like a sermon on justification by faith to read to you, 
— I mean an essay in justification of faith, a defence 
of our right to adopt a believing attitude in religious 
matters, in spite of the fact that our merely logical 

1 An Address to the Philosophical Clubs of Yale and Brown 
Universities. Published in the New World, June, 1896. 

1 



2 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

intellect may not have been coerced. ■ The Will to 
Believe,' accordingly, is the title of my paper. 

I have long defended to my own students the law- 
fulness of voluntarily adopted faith ; but as soon as 
they have got well imbued with the logical spirit, 
they have as a rule refused to admit my contention 
to be lawful philosophically, even though in point 
of fact they were personally all the time chock-full 
of some faith or other themselves. I am all the 
while, however, so profoundly convinced that my 
own position is correct, that your invitation has 
seemed to me a good occasion to make my state- 
ments more clear. Perhaps your minds will be more 
open than those with which I have hitherto had to 
deal. I will be as little technical as I can, though 
I must begin by setting up some technical distinc- 
tions that will help us in the end. 



Let us give the name of hypothesis to anything that 
may be proposed to our belief; and just as the elec- 
tricians speak of live and dead wires, let us speak of 
any hypothesis as either live or dead. A live hy- 
pothesis is one which appeals as a real possibility to 
him to whom it is proposed. If I ask you to believe 
in the Mahdi, the notion makes no electric connec- 
tion with your nature, — it refuses to scintillate with 
any credibility at all. As an hypothesis it is com- 
pletely dead. To an Arab, however (even if he be 
not one of the Mahdi's followers), the hypothesis is 
among the mind's possibilities: it is alive. This 
shows that deadness and liveness in an hypoth- 
esis are not intrinsic properties, but relations to the 



The Will to Believe. 3 

individual thinker. They are measured by his will- 
ingness to act. The maximum of liveness in an 
hypothesis means willingness to act irrevocably. 
Practically, that means belief; but there is some 
believing tendency wherever there is willingness to 
act at all. 

Next, let us call the decision between two hypoth- 
eses an option. Options may be of several kinds. 
They may be — I, living or dead ; 2, forced or avoid- 
able ; 3, momentous or trivial ; and for our purposes 
we may call an option a genuine option when it is 
of the forced, living, and momentous kind. 

1. A living option is one in which both hypothe- 
ses are live ones. If I say to you : "Be a theoso- 
phist or be a Mohammedan," it is probably a dead 
option, because for you neither hypothesis is likely 
to be alive. But if I say : " Be an agnostic or be a 
Christian," it is otherwise : trained as you are, each 
hypothesis makes some appeal, however small, to 
your belief. 

2. Next, if I say to you : " Choose between going 
out with your umbrella or without it," I do not offer 
you a genuine option, for it is not forced. You can 
easily avoid it by not going out at all. Similarly, if 
I say, " Either love me or hate me," " Either call my 
theory true or call it false," your option is avoidable. 
You may remain indifferent to me, neither loving nor 
hating, and you may decline to offer any judgment 
as to my theory. But if I say, " Either accept this 
truth or go without it," I put on you a forced option, 
for there is no standing place outside of the alterna- 
tive. Every dilemma based on a complete logical 
disjunction, with no possibility of not choosing, is 
an option of this forced kind. 



4 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

3. Finally, if I were Dr. Nansen and proposed to 
you to join my North Pole expedition, your option 
would be momentous; for this would probably be 
your only similar opportunity, and your choice now 
would either exclude you from the North Pole sort 
of immortality altogether or put at least the chance 
of it into your hands. He who refuses to embrace 
a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if 
he tried and failed. Per contra, the option is trivial 
when the opportunity is not unique, when the stake 
is insignificant, or when the decision is reversible if 
it later prove unwise. Such trivial options abound 
in the scientific life. A chemist finds an hypothesis 
live enough to spend a year in its verification: he 
believes in it to that extent. But if his experiments 
prove inconclusive either way, he is quit for his loss 
of time, no vital harm being done. 

It will facilitate our discussion if we keep all these 
distinctions well in mind. 



II. 

The next matter to consider is the actual psychol- 
ogy of human opinion. When we look at certain 
facts, it seems as if our passional and volitional na- 
ture lay at the root of all our convictions. When 
we look at others, it seems as if they could do noth- 
ing when the intellect had once said its say. Let 
us take the latter facts up first. 

Does it not seem preposterous on the very face of 
it to talk of our opinions being modifiable at will? 
Can our will either help or hinder our intellect in 
its perceptions of truth? Can we, by just willing it, 
believe that Abraham Lincoln's existence is a myth, 



The Will to Believe. 7 

and that the portraits of him in McClure's Magn, 
zine are all of some one else? Can we, by any effo>r 
of our will, or by any strength of wish that it were 
true, believe ourselves well and about when we are 
roaring with rheumatism in bed, or feel certain that 
the sum of the two one-dollar bills in our pocket 
must be a hundred dollars? We can say any of 
these things, but we are absolutely impotent to be- 
lieve them ; and of just such things is the whole 
fabric of the truths that we do believe in made up, 
— matters of fact, immediate or remote, as Hume 
said, and relations between ideas, which are either 
there or not there for us if we see them so, and 
which if not there cannot be put there by any action 
of our own. 

In Pascal's Thoughts there is a celebrated passage 
known in literature as Pascal's wager. In it he tries 
to force us into Christianity by reasoning as if our 
concern with truth resembled our concern with the 
stakes in a game of chance. Translated freely his 
words are these : You must either believe or not be- 
lieve that God is — which will you do? Your human 
reason cannot say. A game is going on between you 
and the nature of things which at the day of judg- 
ment will bring out either heads or tails. Weigh 
what your gains and your losses would be if you 
should stake all you have on heads, or God's exist- 
ence : if you win in such case, you gain eternal beati- 
tude; if you lose, you lose nothing at all. If there 
were an infinity of chances, and only one for God in 
this wager, still you ought to stake your all on God ; 
for though you surely risk a finite loss by this pro- 
cedure, any finite loss is reasonable, even a certain 
one is reasonable, if there is but the possibility 0/ 



4 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

3 .finite gain. Go, then, and take holy water, and 
yov.ave masses said ; belief will come and stupefy your 
wrscruples, — Cela vousfera croire et vous abetira. Why 
^ should you not? At bottom, what have you to lose? 
You probably feel that when religious faith ex- 
presses itself thus, in the language of the gaming- 
table, it is put to its last trumps. Surely Pascal's 
own personal belief in masses and holy water had far 
other springs ; and this celebrated page of his is but 
an argument for others, a last desperate snatch at a 
weapon against the hardness of the unbelieving heart. 
We feel that a faith in masses and holy water adopted 
wilfully after such a mechanical calculation would 
lack the inner soul of faith's reality; and if we were 
ourselves in the place of the Deity, we should prob- 
ably take particular pleasure in cutting off believers 
of this pattern from their infinite reward. It is evi- 
dent that unless there be some pre-existing tendency 
to believe in masses and holy water, the option 
offered to the will by Pascal is not a living option. 
Certainly no Turk ever took to masses and holy wa- 
ter on its account; and even to us Protestants these 
means of salvation seem such foregone impossibili- 
ties that Pascal's logic, invoked for them specifically, 
leaves us unmoved. As well might the Mahdi write 
to us, saying, "I am the Expected One whom God 
has created in his effulgence. You shall be infinitely 
happy if you confess me ; otherwise you shall be cut 
off from the light of the sun. Weigh, then, your 
infinite gain if I am genuine against your finite sacri- 
fice if I am not ! " His logic would be that of Pascal ; 
but he would vainly use it on us, for the hypothesis 
he offers us is dead. No tendency to act on it exists 
in us to any degree. 



The Will to Believe. 7 

The talk of believing by our volition seems, then, 
from one point of view, simply silly. From another 
point of view it is worse than silly, it is vile. When 
one turns to the magnificent edifice of the physical 
sciences, and sees how it was reared ; what thousands 
of disinterested moral lives of men lie buried in its 
mere foundations ; what patience and postponement, 
what choking down of preference, what submission to 
the icy laws of outer fact are wrought into its very 
stones and mortar; how absolutely impersonal it 
stands in its vast augustness, — then how besotted 
and contemptible seems every little sentimentalist 
who comes blowing his voluntary smoke-wreaths, 
and pretending to decide things from out of his 
private dream ! Can we wonder if those bred in 
the rugged and manly school of science should feel 
like spewing such subjectivism out of their mouths? 
The whole system of loyalties which grow up in the 
schools of science go dead against its toleration ; so 
that it is only natural that those who have caught 
the scientific fever should pass over to the opposite 
extreme, and write sometimes as if the incorruptibly 
truthful intellect ought positively to prefer bitterness 
and unacceptableness to the heart in its cup. 

It fortifies my soul to know 

That, though I perish, Truth is so — 

sings Clough, while Huxley exclaims : " My only 
consolation lies in the reflection that, however bad 
our posterity may become, so far as they hold by the 
plain rule of not pretending to believe what they have 
no reason to believe, because it may be to their ad- 
vantage so to pretend [the word ' pretend ' is surely 
here redundant], they will not have reached the low- 






8 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

est depth of immorality." And that delicious enfant 
terrible Clifford writes : " Belief is desecrated when 
given to unproved and unquestioned statements for 
the solace and private pleasure of the believer. . . . 
Whoso would deserve well of his fellows in this mat- 
ter will guard the purity of his belief with a very- 
fanaticism of jealous care, lest at any time it should 
rest on an unworthy object, and catch a stain which 
can never be wiped away. ... If [a] belief has been 
accepted on insufficient evidence [even though the 
belief be true, as Clifford on the same page explains] 
the pleasure is a stolen one. ... It is sinful because 
it is stolen in defiance of our duty to mankind. That 
duty is to guard ourselves from such beliefs as from a 
pestilence which may shortly master our own body 
and then spread to the rest of the town. ... It is 
wrong always, everywhere, and for every one, to 
believe anything upon insufficient evidence." 

III. 

All this strikes one as healthy, even when ex- 
pressed, as by Clifford, with somewhat too much of 
robustious pathos in the voice. Free-will and simple 
wishing do seem, in the matter of our credences, to 
be only fifth wheels to the coach. Yet if any one 
should thereupon assume that intellectual insight is 
what remains after wish and will and sentimental 
preference have taken wing, or that pure reason is 
what then settles our opinions, he would fly quite 
as directly in the teeth of the facts. 

It is only our already dead hypotheses that our 
willing nature is unable to bring to life again But 
what has made them dead for us is for the most part 



The Will to Believe. 9 

a previous action of our willing nature of an antag- 
onistic kind. ^When I say ' willing nature,' I do not 
mean only such deliberate volitions as may have set 
up habits of belief that we cannot now escape from, — 
I mean all such factors of belief as fear and hope, 
prejudice and passion, imitation and partisanship, 
the circumpressure of our caste and set. As a mat- 
ter of fact we find ourselves believing, we hardly 
know how or why. Mr. Balfour gives the name of 
1 authority ' to all those influences, born of the intel- 
lectual climate, that make hypotheses possible or 
impossible for us, alive or dead. Here in this room, 
we all of us believe in molecules and the conserva- 
tion of energy, in democracy and necessary progress, 
in Protestant Christianity and the duty of fighting for 
■ the doctrine of the immortal Monroe/ all for no rea- 
sons worthy of the name. We see into these mat- 
ters with no more inner clearness, and probably with 
much less, than any disbeliever in them might pos- 
sess. His unconventionality would probably have 
some grounds to show for its conclusions ; but for 
us, not insight, but the prestige of the opinions, is 
what makes the spark shoot from them and light up 
our sleeping magazines of faith. Our reason is quite 
satisfied, in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of 
every thousand of us, if it can find a few arguments 
that will do to recite in case our credulity is criticised 
by some one else. Our faith is faith in some one else's 
faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case. 
Our belief in truth itself, for instance, that there is a 
truth, and that our minds and it are made for each 
other, — what is it but a passionate affirmation of 
desire, in which our social system backs us up ? We 
want to have a truth; we want to believe that our 






io Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

experiments and studies and discussions must put us 
in a continually better and better position towards it ; 
and on this line we agree to fight out our thinking 
lives. But if a pyrrhonistic sceptic asks us how we 
know all this, can our logic find a reply ? No ! cer- 
tainly it cannot. It is just one volition against an- 
other, — we willing to go in for life upon a trust or 
assumption which he, for his part, does not care to 
make. 1 

As a rule we disbelieve all facts and theories for 
which we have no use. Clifford's cosmic emotions 
find no use for Christian feelings. Huxley belabors 
the bishops because there is no use for sacerdotal- 
ism in his scheme of life. Newman, on the contrary, 
goes over to Romanism, and finds all sorts of reasons 
good for staying there, because a priestly system is 
for him an organic need and delight. Why do so few 
* scientists ' even look at the evidence for telepathy, 
so called? Because they think, as a leading biologist, 
now dead, once said to me, that even if such a thing 
were true, scientists ought to band together to keep 
it suppressed and concealed. It would undo the 
uniformity of Nature and all sorts of other things 
without which scientists cannot carry on their pur- 
suits. But if this very man had been shown some- 
thing which as a scientist he might do with telepathy, 
he might not only have examined the evidence, but 
even have found it good enough. This very law which 
the logicians would impose upon us — if I may give 
the name of logicians to those who would rule out 
our willing nature here — is based on nothing but 
their own natural wish to exclude all elements for 

1 Compare the admirable page 310 in S. H. Hodgson's " Time and 
Space," London, 1865. 




The Will to Believe. 

which they, in their professional quality of logicians, 
can find no use. 

Evidently, then, our non-intellectual nature does 
influence ^. convictions. There are passional ten- 
dencies and volitions which run before and others 
which come after belief, and it is only the latter that 
are too late for the fair ; and they are not too late 
when the previous passional work has been already 
in their own direction. Pascal's argument, instead 
of being powerless, then seems a regular clincher, 
and is the last stroke needed to make our faith in. 
masses and holy water complete. The state of things 
is evidently far from simple; and pure insight and 
logic, whatever they might do ideally, are not the 
only things that really do produce our creeds. 

IV. 

Our next duty, having recognized this mixed-up 
state of affairs, is to ask whethei it be simply repre- 
hensible and pathological, or whether, on the contrary, 
we must treat it as a normal element in making up 
our minds. The thesis I defend is, briefly stated, 
this : Our passional nature not only lawfully may* 
but must, decide an option between propositions, when-' 
ever it is a genuiue option that cannot by its nature be 
decided on intellectual grounds ; for to say, tinder such 
circumstances, " Do not decide, but leave the question 
open!' is itself a passional decision, — just like decid- 
ing yes or no, — and is attended with the same risk 
of losing the truth. The thesis thus abstractly ex- 
pressed will, I trust, soon become quite clear. But 
I must first indulge in a bit more of preliminary 
work. 



V 



oph : 



It will be observed that for the purposes of this 
discussion we are on ' dogmatic ' ground, — ground, I 
mean, which leaves systematic philosophical scepti- 
cism altogether out of account. The postulate that 
there is truth, and that it is the destiny of our minds 
to attain it, we are deliberately resolving to make, 
though the sceptic will not make it. We part com- 
pany with him, therefore, absolutely, at this point. 
But the faith that truth exists, and that our minds 
can find it, may be held in two ways. We may talk 
of the empiricist way and of the absolutist way of be- 
lieving in truth. The absolutists in this matter say 
that we not only can attain to knowing truth, but we 
can know when we have attained to knowing it; 
while the empiricists think that although we may 
attain it, we cannot infallibly know when. To know 
is one thing, and to know for certain that we know is , 
another. One may hold to the first being possible 
without the second ; hence the empiricists and the 
absolutists, although neither of them is a sceptic in 
the usual philosophic sense of the term, show very 
different degrees of dogmatism in their lives. 

If we look at the history of opinions, we see that 
the empiricist tendency has largely prevailed in 
science, while in philosophy the absolutist tendency 
has had everything its own way. The characteristic 
sort of happiness, indeed, which philosophies yield has.; 
mainly consisted in the conviction felt by each suc- 
cessive school or system that by it bottom-certitude 
had been attained. " Other philosophies are col- 
lections of opinions, mostly false; my philosophy 



The Will to Believe. 13 

gives standing-ground forever," — who does not rec- 
ognize in this the key-note of every system worthy 
of the name? A system, to be a system at all, must 
come as a closed system, reversible in this or that 
detail, perchance, but in its essential features never ! 

Scholastic orthodoxy, to which one must always 
go when one wishes to find perfectly clear statement, 
has beautifully elaborated this absolutist conviction 
in a doctrine which it calls that of ' objective evi- 
dence.' If, for example, I am unable to doubt that 
I now exist before you, that two is less than three, or 
that if all men are mortal then I am mortal too, 
it is because these things illumine my intellect irre- 
sistibly. The final ground of this objective evidence 
possessed by certain propositions is the adcequatio 
intellects nostri cum re. The certitude it brings in- 
volves an aptitudinem ad extorquendum certum assen- 
sum on the part of the truth envisaged, and on the 
side of the subject a quietem in cognitioize, when once 
the object is mentally received, that leaves no possi- 
bility of doubt behind ; and in the whole transaction 
nothing operates but the entitas ipsa of the object 
and the entitas ipsa of the mind. We slouchy mod- 
ern thinkers dislike to talk in Latin, — indeed, we dis- 
like to talk in set terms at all ; but at bottom our own 
state of mind is very much like this whenever we 
uncritically abandon ourselves: You believe in ob- 
jective evidence, and I do. Of some things we feel 
that we are certain : we know, and we know that we 
do know. There is something that gives a click in- 
side of us, a bell that strikes twelve, when the hands 
of our mental clock have swept the dial and meet 
over the meridian hour. The greatest empiricists 
among us are only empiricists on reflection: when 



14 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

left to their instincts, they dogmatize like infallible 
popes. When the Cliffords tell us how sinful it is to 
be Christians on such ' insufficient evidence,' insuffi- 
ciency is really the last thing they have in mind. 
For them the evidence is absolutely sufficient, only 
it makes the other way. They believe so completely 
in an anti-christian order of the universe that there 
is no living option : Christianity is a dead hypothe- 
sis from the start. 



VI. 

But now, since we are all such absolutists by in- 
stinct, what in our quality of students of philosophy 
ought we to do about the fact? Shall we espouse 
and indorse it? Or shall we treat it as a weakness 
of our nature from which we must free ourselves, if 
we can? 

I sincerely believe that the latter course is the only 
one we can follow as reflective men. Objective evi- 
dence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to 
play with, but where on this moonlit and dream- 
visited planet are they found? I am, therefore, 
myself a complete empiricist so far as my theory of 
human knowledge goes. I live, to be sure, by the 
practical faith that we must go on experiencing and 
thinking over our experience, for only thus can our 
opinions grow more true; but to hold any one of 
them — I absolutely do not care which — as if it never 
could be reinterpretable or corrigible, I believe to be 
a tremendously mistaken attitude, and I think that the 
whole history of philosophy will bear me out. There 
is but one indefectibly certain truth, and that is the 
truth that pyrrhonistic scepticism itself leaves stand- 



The Will to Believe. 



15 



ing, — the truth that the present phenomenon of -^ 
consciousness exists. That, however, is the bare 
starting-point of knowledge, the mere admission of 
a stuff to be philosophized about. The various phi- 
losophies are but so many attempts at expressing 
what this stuff really is. And if we repair to our 
libraries what disagreement do we discover ! Where 
is a certainly true answer found? Apart from ab- 
stract propositions of comparison (such as two and 
two are the same as four), propositions which tell 
us nothing by themselves about concrete reality, we 
find no proposition ever regarded by any one as evi- 
dently certain that has not either been called a false- 
hood, or at least had its truth sincerely questioned 
by some one else. The transcending of the axioms 
of geometry, not in play but in earnest, by certain 
of our contemporaries (as Zollner and Charles H. 
Hinton), and the rejection of the whole Aristotelian 
logic by the Hegelians, are striking instances in 
point. 

No concrete test of what is really true has ever 
been agreed upon. Some make the criterion exter- 
nal to the moment of perception, putting it either \ 
in revelation, the consensus gentium, the instincts of 
the heart, or the systematized experience of the race. 
Others make the perceptive moment its own test, — 
Descartes, for instance, with his clear and distinct 
ideas guaranteed by the veracity of God ; Reid with 
his ' common-sense ; ' and Kant with his forms of 
synthetic judgment a priori. The inconceivability 
of the opposite ; the capacity to be verified by sense ; 
the possession of complete organic unity or self-rela- 
tion, realized when a thing is its own other, — are 
standards which, in turn, have been used. The much 




1 6 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

lauded objective evidence is never triumphantly there; 
it is a mere aspiration or Grenzbegriff, marking the 
infinitely remote ideal of our thinking life. To claim 
that certain truths now possess it, is simply to say 
that when you think them true and they are true, 
then their evidence is objective, otherwise it is not. 
But practically one's conviction that the evidence 
one goes by is of the real objective brand, is only 
one more subjective opinion added to the lot. For 
what a contradictory array of opinions have objec- 
tive evidence and absolute certitude been claimed ! 
The world is rational through and through, — its ex- 
istence is an ultimate brute fact; there is a perso- 
nal God, — a personal God is inconceivable ; there 
is an extra-mental physical world immediately known, 
— the mind can only know its own ideas ; a moral im- 
perative exists, — obligation is only the resultant of 
desires; a permanent spiritual principle is in every 
one, — there are only shifting states of mind; there 
is an endless chain of causes, — there is an absolute 
first cause ; an eternal necessity, — a freedom ; a 
purpose, — no purpose; a primal One, — a primal 
Many ; a universal continuity, — an essential discon- 
tinuity in things ; an infinity, — no infinity. There is 
this, — there is that ; there is indeed nothing which 
some one has not thought absolutely true, while his 
neighbor deemed it absolutely false; and not an 
absolutist among them seems ever to have consid- 
ered that the trouble may all the time be essential 
and that the intellect, even with truth directly in its 
grasp, may have no infallible signal for knowing 
whether it be truth or no. When, indeed, one re- 
members that the most striking practical application 
to life of the doctrine of objective certitude has been 



The Will to Believe. 17 

the conscientious labors of the Holy Office of the 
Inquisition, one feels less tempted than ever to lend 
the doctrine a respectful ear. 

But please observe, now, that when as empiricists 
we give up the doctrine of objective certitude, we do 
not thereby give up the quest or hope of truth itself. 
We still pin our faith on its existence, and still believe 
that we gain an ever better position towards it by 
systematically continuing to roll up experiences and 
think. Our great difference from the scholastic lies in 
the way we face. The strength of his system lies in 
the principles, the origin, the terminus a quo of his 
thought ; for us the strength is in the outcome, the 
upshot, the terminus ad quern. Not where it comes 
from but what it leads to is to decide. It matters not 
to an empiricist from what quarter an hypothesis may 
come to him : he may have acquired it by fair means 
or by foul ; passion may have whispered or accident 
suggested it; but if the total drift of thinking con- 
tinues to confirm it, that is what he means by its 
being true. 

VII. 

One more point, small but important, and our pre- 
liminaries are done. There are two ways of looking 
at our duty in the matter of opinion, — ways entirely 
different, and yet ways about whose difference the 
theory of knowledge seems hitherto to have shown 
very little concern. We must know the truth ; and 
we must avoid error, — these are our first and great 
commandments as would-be knowers ; but they are 
not two ways of stating an identical commandment, 
they are two separable laws. Although it may indeed 
happen that when we believe the truth A> we escape 



iS Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

as an incidental consequence from believing the false* 
hood B, it hardly ever happens that by merely dis- 
believing B we necessarily believe A. We may in 
escaping B fall into believing other falsehoods, C or 
D, just as bad as B ; or we may escape B by not 
believing anything at all, not even A. 

Believe truth ! Shun error ! — these, we see, are 
two materially different laws ; and by choosing be- 
tween them we may end by coloring differently our 
whole intellectual life. We may regard the chase 
for truth as paramount, and the avoidance of error as 
secondary; or we may, on the other hand, treat the 

' avoidance of error as more imperative, and let truth 
take its chance. Clifford, in the instructive passage 
which I have quoted, exhorts us to the latter course. 
Believe nothing, he tells us, keep your mind in sus- 
pense forever, rather than by closing it on insufficient 
evidence incur the awful risk of believing lies. You, 
on the other hand, may think that the risk of being in 
error is a very small matter when compared with the 
blessings of real knowledge, and be ready to be duped 
many times in your investigation rather than post- 
pone indefinitely the chance of guessing true. I 
myself find it impossible to go with Clifford. We 
must remember that these feelings of our duty about 
either truth or error are in any case only expressions 
of our passional life. Biologically considered, our 
minds are as ready to grind out falsehood as veracity, 

\ and he who says, " Better go without belief forever 
than believe a lie ! " merely shows his own prepon- 
derant private horror of becoming a dupe. He may 
be critical of many of his desires and fears, but this 
fear he slavishly obeys. He cannot imagine any one 
questioning its binding force. For my own part, I 



The Will to Believe. 19 

have also a horror of being duped; but I can believe 
that worse things than being duped may happen to a 
man in this world : so Clifford's exhortation has to my 
ears a thoroughly fantastic sound. It is like a gen- 1 
eral informing his soldiers that it is better to keep out I 
of battle forever than to risk a single wound. Not 
so are victories either over enemies or over nature 
gained. Our errors are surely not such awfully sol- 
emn things. In a world where we are so certain to 
incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain light- 
ness of heart seems healthier than this excessive ner- 
vousness on their behalf. At any rate, it seems the 
fittest thing for the empiricist philosopher. 

VIII. 

And now, after all this introduction, let us go straight 
at our question. I have said, and now repeat it, that 
not only as a matter of fact do we find our passional 
nature influencing us in our opinions, but that there 
are some options between opinions in which this 
influence must be regarded both as an inevitable and 
as a lawful determinant of our choice. 

I i'car here that some of you my hearers will begin 
to scent danger, and lend an inhospitable ear. Two 
first steps of passion you have indeed had to admit as 
necessary, — we must think so as to avoid dupery, 
and we must think so as to gain truth ; but the surest 
path to those ideal consummations, you will probably 
consider, is from now onwards to take no further pas- 
sional step. 

Well, of course, I agree 'as far as the facts will 
allow. Wherever the option between losing truth 
and gaining it is not momentous, we can throw the 



20 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

chance* of gaining truth away, and at any rate save 
ourselves from any chance of believing falsehood, by 
not making up our minds at all till objective evidence 
has come. In scientific questions, this is almost always 
the case ; and even in human affairs in general, the 
need of acting is seldom so urgent that a false belief 
to act on is better than no belief at all. Law courts, 
indeed, have to decide on the best evidence attainable 
for the moment, because a judge's duty is to make 
law as well as to ascertain it, and (as a learned judge 
once said to me) few cases are worth spending much 
time over : the great thing is to have them decided 
on any acceptable principle, and got out of the way. 
But in our dealings with objective nature we obviously 
are recorders, not makers, of the truth ; and decisions 
for the mere sake of deciding promptly and getting 
on to the next business would be wholly out of place. 
Throughout the breadth of physical nature facts are 
what they are quite independently of us, and seldom 
is there any such hurry about them that the risks of 
being duped by believing a premature theory need be 
faced. The questions here are always trivial options, 
the hypotheses are hardly living (at any rate not 
living for us spectators), the choice between believing 
truth or falsehood is seldom forced. The attitude of 
sceptical balance is therefore the absolutely wise one 
if we would escape mistakes. What difference, indeed, 
does it make to most of us whether we have or have 
not a theory of the Rontgen rays, whether we believe 
or not in mind-stuff, or have a conviction about the 
causality of conscious states? It makes no difference. 
Such options are not forced on us. On every account 
it is better not to make them, but still keep weighing 
reasons pro et contra with an indifferent hand. 



The Will to Believe. 21 

I speak, of course, here of the purely judging mind 
For purposes of discovery such indifference is to be 
less highly recommended, and science would be far 
less advanced than she is if the passionate desires of 
individuals to get their own faiths confirmed had been 
kept out of the game. See for example the sagacity 
which Spencer and Weismann now display. On the 
other hand, if you want an absolute duffer in an inves- 
tigation, you must, after all, take the man who has no 
interest whatever in its results : he is the warranted 
incapable, the positive fool. The most useful investi- 
gator, because the most sensitive observer, is always 
he whose eager interest in one side of the question is 
balanced by an equally keen nervousness lest he be- 
come deceived. 1 Science has organized this nervous- 
ness into a regular technique, her so-called method of 
verification ; and she has fallen so deeply in love with 
the method that one may even say she has ceased to 
care for truth by itself at all. It is only truth as tech- 
nically verified that interests her. The truth of truths 
might come in merely affirmative form, and she would 
decline to touch it. Such truth as that, she might 
repeat with Clifford, would be stolen in defiance of 
her duty to mankind. Human passions, however, are 
stronger than technical rules. " Le coeur a ses rai- f. 
sons," as Pascal says, " que la raison ne connait pas ; " 
and however indifferent to all but the bare rules of 
the game the umpire, the abstract intellect, may be, 
the concrete players who furnish him the materials to 
judge of are usually, each one of them, in love with 
some pet * live hypothesis ' of his own. Let us agree, 
however, that wherever there is no forced option, the 

1 Compare "Wilfrid Ward's Essay, " The Wish to Believe," in his 
Witnesses to the Unseen, Macmillan & Co., 1893. 



22 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

dispassionately judicial intellect with no pet hypoth- 
esis, saving us, as it does, from dupery at any rate, 
ought to be our ideal. 

The question next arises : Are there not somewhere 
forced options in our speculative questions, and can 
we (as men who may be interested at least as much 
in positively gaining truth as in merely escaping 
dupery) always wait with impunity till the coercive 
evidence shall have arrived ? It seems a priori im- 
probable that the truth should be so nicely adjusted 
to our needs and powers as that. In the great board- 
ing-house of nature, the cakes and the butter and the 
syrup seldom come out so even and leave the plates 
so clean. Indeed, we should view them with scien- 
tific suspicion if they did. 



IX. 

Moral questions immediately present themselves as 
questions whose solution cannot wait for sensible 
proof. A moral question is a question not of what 
sensibly exists, but of what is good, or would be good 
if it did exist. Science can tell us what exists ; but 
to compare the worths, both of what exists and of 
what does not exist, we must consult not science, but 
what Pascal calls our heart. Science herself consults 
her heart when she lays it down that the infinite as- 
certainment of fact and correction of false belief are 
the supreme goods for man. Challenge the state- 
ment, and science can only repeat it oracularly, or 
else prove it by showing that such ascertainment and 
correction bring man all sorts of other goods which 
I man's heart in turn declares. The question of having 
' moral beliefs at all or not having them is decided by 



The Will to Believe. 23 

our will. Are our moral preferences true or false, 
or are they only odd biological phenomena, making 
things good or bad for us, but in themselves in- 
different? How can your pure intellect decide? If 
your heart does not want a world of moral reality, 
your head will assuredly never make you believe in 
one. Mephistophelian scepticism, indeed, will satisfy 
the head's play-instincts much better than any rigor- 
ous idealism can. Some men (even at the student 
age) are so naturally cool-hearted that the moralistic 
hypothesis never has for them any pungent life, and 
in their supercilious presence the hot young moralist 
always feels strangely ill at ease. The appearance of 
knowingness is on their side, of naivete and gullibility 
on his. Yet, in the inarticulate heart of him, he clings 
to it that he is not a dupe, and that there is a realm 
in which (as Emerson says) all their wit and intel- 
lectual superiority is no better than the cunning of 
a fox. Moral scepticism can no more be refuted or 
proved by logic than intellectual scepticism can. 
When we stick to it that there is truth (be it of either 
kind), we do so with our whole nature, and resolve to 
stand or fall by the results. The sceptic with his 
whole nature adopts the doubting attitude ; but which 
of us is the wiser, Omniscience only knows. 

Turn now from these wide questions of good to a 
certain class of questions of fact, questions concerning 
personal relations, states of mind between one man 
and another. Do you like me or not ? — for example. 
Whether you do or not depends, in countless in- 
stances, on whether I meet you half-way, am willing 
to assume that you must like me, and show you trust 
and expectation. The previous faith on my part in 
your liking's existence is in such cases what makes 



24 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

your liking come. But if I stand aloof, and refuse to 
budge an inch until I have objective evidence, until 
you shall have done something apt, as the absolutists 
say, ad extorquendum assensum meum y ten to one your 
liking never comes. How many women's hearts are 
vanquished by the mere sanguine insistence of some 
man that they must love him ! he will not consent to 
the hypothesis that they cannot. The desire for a 
certain kind of truth here brings about that special 
truth's existence ; and so it is in innumerable cases of 
other sorts. Who gains promotions, boons, appoint- 
ments, but the man in whose life they are seen to 
play the part of live hypotheses, who discounts them, 
sacrifices other things for their sake before they have 
come, and takes risks for them in advance? His 
faith acts on the powers above him as a claim, and 
creates its own verification. 

A social organism of any sort whatever, large or 
small, is what it is because each member proceeds to 
his own duty with a trust that the other members will 
simultaneously do theirs. Wherever a desired result 
is achieved by the co-operation of many independent 
persons, its existence as a fact is a pure consequence 
of the precursive faith in one another of those imme- 
diately concerned. A government, an army, a com- 
mercial system, a ship, a college, an athletic team, all 
exist on this condition, without which not only is 
nothing achieved, but nothing is even attempted. A 
whole train of passengers (individually brave enough) 
will be looted by a few highwaymen, simply because 
the latter can count on one another, while each pas- 
senger fears that if he makes a movement of resist- 
ance, he will be shot before any one else backs him 
up. If we believed that the whole car-full would rise 



The Will to Believe. 25 

at once with us, we should each severally rise, and 
train-robbing would never even be attempted. There 
are, then, cases where a fact cannot come at all unless 
a preliminary faith exists in its coming. And where \ 
faith in a fact can help create the fact, that would be 
an insane logic which should say that faith running 
ahead of scientific evidence is the ' lowest kind of 
immorality ' into which a thinking being can fall. Yet 
such is the logic by which our scientific absolutists 
pretend to regulate our lives ! 



X. . 

In truths dependent on our personal action, then, 
faith based on desire is certainly a lawful and pos- 
sibly an indispensable thing. 

But now, it will be said, these are all childish hu- 
man cases, and have nothing to do with great cosmi- 
cal matters, like the question of religious faith. Let 
us then pass on to that. Religions differ so much 
in their accidents that in discussing the religious 
question we must make it very generic and broad. 
What then do we now mean by the religious hypo- 
thesis ? Science says things are ; morality says some 
things are better than other things ; and religion says 
essentially two things. 

First, she says that the best things are the more 
eternal things, the overlapping things, the things in 
the universe that throw the last stone, so to speak, 
and say the final word. " Perfection is eternal," — 
this phrase of Charles Secretan seems a good way of 
putting this first affirmation of religion, an affirmation 
which obviously cannot yet be verified scientifically 
at all. 



16 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

The second affirmation of religion is that we are 
better off even now if we believe her first affirmation 
to be true. 

Now, let us consider what the logical elements of 
this situation are in case the religious hypothesis in both 
its branches be really true. (Of course, we must admit 
that possibility at the outset. If we are to discuss 
the question at all, it must involve a living option. 
If for any of you religion be a hypothesis that cannot, 
by any living possibility be true, then you need go 
no farther. I speak to the 'saving remnant' alone.) 
So proceeding, we see, first, that religion offers itself 
as a momentous option. We are supposed to gain, 
even now, by our belief, and to lose by our non- 
belief, a certain vital good. Secondly, religion is a 
forced option, so far as that good goes. We cannot 
escape the issue by remaining sceptical and waiting 
for more light, because, although we do avoid error 
in that way if religion be untrue, we lose the good, 
if it be true, just as certainly as if we positively chose 
to disbelieve. It is as if a man should hesitate indefi- 
nitely to ask a certain woman to marry him because 
he was not perfectly sure that she would prove an 
angel after he brought her home. Would he not 
cut himself off from that particular angel-possibility 
as decisively as if he went and married some one 
else? Scepticism, then, is not avoidance of option; 
it is option of a certain particular kind of risk. Better 
risk loss of truth than chance of error, — that is your 
faith-vetoer's exact position. He is actively playing 
his stake as much as the believer is; he is backing 
the field against the religious hypothesis, just as the 
believer is backing the religious hypothesis against the 
field. To preach scepticism to us as a duty until 



The Will to Believe. 27 

'sufficient evidence* for religion be found, is tanta- 
mount therefore to telling us, when in presence of the 
religious hypothesis, that to yield to our fear of its 
being error is wiser and better than to yield to our 
hope that it may be true. It is not intellect against 
all passions, then ; it is only intellect with one pas- 
sion laying down its law. And by what, forsooth, 
is the supreme wisdom of this passion warranted? 
Dupery for dupery, what proof is there that dupery 
through hope is so much worse than dupery through 
fear? I, for one, can see no proof; and I simply 
refuse obedience to the scientist's command to imi- 
tate his kind of option, in a case where my own stake 
is important enough to give me the right to choose 
my own form of risk. If religion be true and the 
evidence for it be still insufficient, I do not wish, by 
putting your extinguisher upon my nature (which 
feels to me as if it had after all some business in this 
matter), to forfeit my sole chance in life of getting 
upon the winning side, — that chance depending, of 
course, on my willingness to run the risk of acting 
as if my passional need of taking the world religiously 
might be prophetic and right. 

All this is on the supposition that it really may 
be prophetic and right, and that, even to us who are 
discussing the matter, religion is a live hypothesis 
which may be true. Now, to most of us religion 
comes in a still further way that makes a veto on 
our active faith even more illogical. The more per- 
fect and more eternal aspect of the universe is rep- 
resented in our religions as having personal form. 
The universe is no longer a mere It to us, but a Thou, 
if we are religious; and any relation that may be 
possible from person to person might be possible 



28 Essays in Popular Philosophy* 

Aere. For instance, although in one sense we are 
passive portions of the universe, in another we show 
a curious autonomy, as if we were small active cen- 
tres on our own account. We feel, too, as if the 
appeal of religion to us were made to our own active 
good-will, as if evidence might be forever withheld 
from us unless we met the hypothesis half-way. To 
take a trivial illustration: just as a man who in a 
company of gentlemen made no advances, asked a 
warrant for every concession, and believed no one's 
word without proof, would cut himself off by such 
churlishness from all the social rewards that a more 
trusting spirit would earn, — so here, one who should 
shut himself up in snarling logicality and try to make 
the gods extort his recognition willy-nilly, or not get 
it at all,- might cut himself off forever from his only 
opportunity of making the gods' acquaintance. This 
feeling, forced on us we know not whence, that by 
obstinately believing that there are gods (although 
not to do so would be so easy both for our logic and 
our life) we are doing the universe the deepest ser- 
vice we can, seems part of the living essence of the 
religious hypothesis. If the hypothesis were true in 
all its parts, including this one, then pure intellectu- 
alism, with its veto on our making willing advances, 
would be an absurdity; and some participation of 
our sympathetic nature would be logically required. 
I, therefore, for one, cannot see my way to accepting 
the agnostic rules for truth-seeking, or wilfully agree 
to keep my willing nature out of the game. I cannot 
do so for this plain reason, that a rule of thinking 
which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledg- 
ing certain kinds of truth if those kinds of truth were 
really there, would be an irrational rule. That for me 



The Will to Believe. 29 

,'s the long and short of the formal logic of the situa- 
tion, no matter what the kinds of truth might materi- 
ally be. 

I confess I do not see how this logic can be 
escaped. But sad experience makes me fear that 
some of you may still shrink from radically saying 
with me, in abstracto, that we have the right to 
believe at our own risk any hypothesis that is live 
enough to tempt our will. I suspect, however, that 
if this is so, it is because you have got away from 
the abstract logical point of view altogether, and are 
thinking (perhaps without realizing it) of some par- 
ticular religious hypothesis which for you is dead. 
The freedom to ' believe what we will ' you apply to 
the case of some patent superstition; and the faith 
you think of is the faith defined by the schoolboy 
when he said, " Faith is when you believe something 
that you know ain't true." I can only repeat that 
this is misapprehension. In concrete), the freedom to 
believe can only cover living options which the intel- 
lect of the individual cannot by itself resolve; and 
living options never seem absurdities to him who has 
them to consider. When I look at the religious 
question as it really puts itself to concrete men, and 
when I think of all the possibilities which both prac- 
tically and theoretically it involves, then this command 
that we shall put a stopper on our heart, instincts, 
and courage, and wait — acting of course mean- 
while more or less as if religion were not true 1 — 

1 Since belief is measured by action, he who forbids us to believe 
religion to be true, necessarily also forbids us to act as we should if 
we did believe it to be true. The whole defence of religious faith 
hinges upon actioa If the action required or inspired by the reli- 
gious hypothesis is in no way different from that dictated by the 



30 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

till doomsday, or till such time as our intellect and 
senses working together may have raked in evidence 
enough, — this command, I say, seems to me the 
queerest idol ever manufactured in the philosophic 
cave. Were we scholastic absolutists, there might be 
more excuse. If we had an infallible intellect with 
its objective certitudes, we might feel ourselves dis- 
loyal to such a perfect organ of knowledge in not 
trusting to it exclusively, in not waiting for its releas- 
ing word. But if we are empiricists, if we believe that 
no bell in us tolls to let us know for certain when 
truth is in our grasp, then it seems a piece of idle 
fantasticality to preach so solemnly our duty of wait- 
ing for the bell. Indeed we may wait if we will, — I 
hope you do not think that I am denying that, — but 
if we do so, we do so at our peril as much as if we 
believed. In either case we act, taking our life in 
our hands. No one of us ought to issue vetoes to 
the other, nor should we bandy words of abuse. We 
ought, on the contrary, delicately and profoundly to 
respect one another's mental freedom : then only shall 
we bring about the intellectual republic ; then only 
shall we have that spirit of inner tolerance without 
which all our outer tolerance is soulless, and which is 
empiricism's glory; then only shall we live and let 
live, in speculative as well as in practical things. 

I began by a reference to Fitz James Stephen ; let 
me end by a quotation from him. " What do you think 

naturalistic hypothesis, then religious faith is a pure superfluity, 
better pruned away, and controversy about its legitimacy is a piece 
of idle trifling, unworthy of serious minds. I myself believe, of 
course, that the religious hypothesis gives to the world an expression 
which specifically determines our reactions, and makes them in a 
large part unlike what they might be on a purely naturalistic scheme 
of belief. 



The Will to Believe. 



3i 



of yourself? What do you think of the world? . . . 
These are questions with which all must deal as it 
seems good to them. They are riddles of the Sphinx, 
and in some way or other we must deal with them. 
... In all important transactions of life we have to 
take a leap in the dark. . . . If we decide to leave the 
riddles unanswered, that is a choice ; if we waver in 
our answer, that, too, is a choice : but whatever choice 
we make, we make it at our peril. If a man chooses 
to turn his back altogether on God and the future, 
no one can prevent him ; no one can show beyond 
reasonable doubt that he is mistaken. If a man 
thinks otherwise and acts as he thinks, I do not see 
that any one can prove that he is mistaken. Each 
must act as he thinks best; and if he is wrong, so 
much the worse for him. We stand on a mountain 
pass in the midst of whirling snow and blinding mist, 
through which we get glimpses now and then of paths 
which may be deceptive. If we stand still we shall 
be frozen to death. If we take the wrong road we 
shall be dashed to pieces. We do not certainly know 
whether there is any right one. ;' What must we do ? 
' Be strong and of a good courage.' Act for the best, 
hope for the best, and take what comes. . . . If 
death ends all, we cannot meet death better." 1 



1 Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, p. 353, 2d edition. London, 1874. 



3 2 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 



IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 1 

WHEN Mr. Mallock's book with this title ap- 
peared some fifteen years ago, the jocose 
answer that " it depends on the liver" had great 
currency in the newspapers. The answer which I 
propose to give to-night cannot be jocose. In the 
words of one of Shakespeare's prologues, — 

" I come no more to make you laugh ; things now, 
That bear a weighty and a serious brow, 
Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe, " — 

must be my theme. In the deepest heart of all of us 
there is a corner in which the ultimate mystery of 
things works sadly; and I know not what such an 
association as yours intends, nor what you ask of 
those whom you invite to address you, unless it be to 
lead you from the surface-glamour of existence, and 
for an hour at least to make you heedless to the 
buzzing and jigging and vibration of small interests 
and excitements that form the tissue of our ordinary 
consciousness. Without further explanation or apo- 
logy, then, I ask you to join me in turning an attention, 
commonly too unwilling, to the profounder bass-note 
of life. Let us search the lonely depths for an hour 
together, and see what answers in the last folds and 
recesses of things our question may find. 

1 An Address to the Harvard Young Men's Christian Association. 
Published in the International Journal of Ethics for October, 1895, 
and as a pocket volume by S. B. Weston, Philadelphia, 1896. 



Is Life Worth Living? ^3 



With many men the question of life's worth is an- 
swered by a temperamental optimism which makes 
them incapable of believing that anything seriously 
evil can exist. Our dear old Walt Whitman's works 
are the standing text-book of this kind of optimism. 
The mere joy of living is so immense in Walt Whit- 
man's veins that it abolishes the possibility of any 
other kind of feeling : — 

*' To breathe the air, how delicious ! 
To speak, to walk, to seize something by the hand ! . . . 
To be this incredible God I am ! . . . 
O amazement of things, even the least particle ! 

spirituality of things ! 

1 too carol the Sun, usher'd or at noon, or as now, setting ; 

I too throb to the brain and beauty of the earth and of all the 
growths of the earth. ... 

I sing to the last the equalities, modern or old, 

I sing the endless finales of things, 

I say Nature continues — glory continues. 

I praise with electric voice, 

For I do not see one imperfection in the universe, 

And I do not see one cause or result lamentable at last." 

So Rousseau, writing of the nine years he spent at 
Annecy, with nothing but his happiness to tell : — 

"How tell what was neither said nor done nor even 
thought, but tasted only and felt, with no object of my 
felicity but the emotion of felicity itself! I rose with the 
sun, and I was happy ; I went to walk, and I was happy ; 
I saw ' Maman/ and I was happy ; I left her, and I was 
happy. I rambled through the woods and over the vine- 
slopes, I wandered in the valleys, I read, I lounged, I 

3 



34 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

worked in the garden, I gathered the fruits, I helped at 
the indoor work, and happiness followed me everywhere. 
It was in no one assignable thing; it was all within myself; 
it could not leave me for a single instant." 



If moods like this could be made permanent, and 
constitutions like these universal, there would never 
be any occasion for such discourses as the present 
one. No philosopher would seek to prove articu- 
1 ately that life is worth living, for the fact that it ab- 
solutely is so would vouch for itself, and the problem 
disappear in the vanishing of the question rather than 
in the coming of anything like a reply. But we are 
not magicians to make the optimistic temperament 
universal ; and alongside of the deliverances of tem- 
peramental optimism concerning life, those of tem- 
peramental pessimism always exist, and oppose to 
them a standing refutation. In what is called ' circu- 
lar insanity,' phases of melancholy succeed phases of 
mania, with no outward cause that we can discover ; 
and often enough to one and the same well person life 
will present incarnate radiance to-day and incarnate 
dreariness to-morrow, according to the fluctuations of 
what the older medical books used to call " the concoc- 
tion of the humors." In the words of the newspaper 
joke, " it depends on the liver." Rousseau's ill-balanced 
constitution undergoes, a change, and behold him in 
his latter evil days a prey to melancholy and black 
delusions of suspicion and fear. Some men seem 
launched upon the world even from their birth with 
souls as incapable of happiness as Walt Whitman's 
was of gloom, and they have left us their messages in 
even more lasting verse than his, — the exquisite 
Leopardi, for example; or our own contemporary, 




Is Life Worth Living? 35 

James Thomson, in that pathetic book, The City of 
Dreadful Night, which I think is less well-known 
than it should be for its literary beauty, simply be- 
cause men are afraid to quote its words, — they are 
so gloomy, and at the same time so sincere. In one 
place the poet describes a congregation gathered to 
listen to a preacher in a great unillumined cathedral 
at night. The sermon is too long to quote, but it 
ends thus : — 

" ' O Brothers of sad lives ! they are so brief ; 
A few short years must bring us all relief : 

Can we not bear these years of laboring breath . 
But if you would not this poor life fulfil, 
Lo, you are free to end it when you will, 
Without the fear of waking after death.' — 

'■ The organ-like vibrations of his voice 

Thrilled through the vaulted aisles and died away; 
The yearning of the tones which bade rejoice 

Was sad and tender as a requiem lay : 
Our shadowy congregation rested still, 
As brooding on that ' End it when you will.' 

" Our shadowy congregation rested still, 

As musing on that message we had heard, 
And brooding on that ' End it when you will,' 

Perchance awaiting yet some other word ; 
When keen as lightning through a muffled sky 
Sprang forth a shrill and lamentable cry : — 

u l The man speaks sooth, alas ! the man speaks sooth ; 
We have no personal life beyond the grave ; 
There is no God ; Fate knows nor wrath nor ruth : 
Can I find here the comfort which I crave ? 

* ' In all eternity I had one chance, 

One few years' term of gracious human life, — 
The splendors of the intellect's advance, 

The sweetness of the home with babes and wife 1 



3 6 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

" « The social pleasures with their genial wit; 
The fascination of the worlds of art ; 
The glories of the worlds of Nature lit 
By large imagination's glowing heart ; 

u ' The rapture of mere being, full of health ; 

The careless childhood and the ardent youth ; 

The strenuous manhood winning various wealth, 

The reverend age serene with life's long truth : 

" * All the sublime prerogatives of Man ; 

The storied memories of the times of old, 
The patient tracking of the world's great plan 
Through sequences and changes myriadfold. 

" 'This chance was never offered me before; 
For me the infinite past is blank and dumb ; 
This chance recurreth never, nevermore ; 
Blank, blank for me the infinite To-come. 

" ' And this sole chance was frustrate from my birth, 
A mockery, a delusion ; and my breath 
Of noble human life upon this earth 
So racks me that I sigh for senseless death. 

" ' My wine of life is poison mixed with gall, 
My noonday passes in a nightmare dream, 
I worse than lose the years which are my all : 
What can console me for the loss supreme? 

" ' Speak not of comfort where no comfort is, 

Speak not at all : can words make foul things fair? 
Our life 's a cheat, our death a black abyss : 
Hush, and be mute, envisaging despair.' 

u This vehement voice came from the northern aisle, 
Rapid and shrill to its abrupt harsh close ; 
And none gave answer for a certain while, 

For words must shrink from these most wordless woes ; 
At last the pulpit speaker simply said, 
With humid eyes and thoughtful, drooping head,— 



Is Life Worth Living? 37 

u ' My Brother, my poor Brothers, it is thus: 
This life holds nothing good for us, 

But it ends soon and nevermore can be ; 
And we knew nothing of it ere our birth, 
And shall know nothing when consigned to earth : 
I ponder these thoughts, and they comfort me.' " 

" It ends soon, and never more can be," " Lo, you 
are free to end it when you will," — these verses flow 
truthfully from the melancholy Thomson's pen, and 
are in truth a consolation for all to whom, as to him, 
the world is far more like a steady den of fear than a 
continual fountain of delight. That life is not worth 
living the whole army of suicides declare, — an army 
whose roll-call, like the famous evening gun of the 
British army, follows the sun round the world and never 
terminates. We, too, as we sit here in our comfort, 
must ' ponder these things ' also, for we are of one 
substance with these suicides, and their life is the 
life we share. The plainest intellectual integrity, — 
nay, more, the simplest manliness and honor, forbid 
us to forget their case. 

" If suddenly," says Mr. Ruskin, " in the midst of the 
enjoyments of the palate and lightnesses of heart of a Lon- 
don dinner-party, the walls of the chamber were parted, and 
through their gap the nearest human beings who were fam- 
ishing and in misery were borne into the midst of the com- 
pany feasting and fancy free ; if, pale from death, horrible 
in destitution, broken by despair, body by body they were 
laid upon the soft carpet, one beside the chair of every 
guest, — would only the crumbs of the dainties be cast to 
them ; would only a passing glance, a passing thought, be 
vouchsafed to them ? Yet the actual facts, the real relation 
of each Dives and Lazarus, are not altered by the interven- 



3 8 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

tion of the house-wall between the table and the sick-bed, — 
by the few feet of ground (how few !) which are, indeed, all 
that separate the merriment from the misery." 



II. 

To come immediately to the heart of my theme, 
then, what I propose is to imagine ourselves reason- 
ing with a fellow-mortal who is on such terms with 
life that the only comfort left him is to brood on the 
assurance, " You may end it when you will." What 
reasons can we plead that may render such a brother 
(or sister) willing to take up the burden again? 
. Ordinary Christians, reasoning with would-be sui- 
/ cides, have little to offer them beyond the usual 
negative, " Thou shalt not." God alone is master of 
life and death, they say, and it is a blasphemous act 
to anticipate his absolving hand. But can we find 
nothing richer or more positive than this, no reflec- 
tions to urge whereby the suicide may actually see, 
and in all sad seriousness feel, that in spite of adverse 
appearances even for him life is still worth living? 
There are suicides and suicides (in the United States 
about three thousand of them every year), and I 
must frankly confess that with perhaps the majority 
of these my suggestions are impotent to deal. Where 
suicide is the result of insanity or sudden frenzied 
impulse, reflection is impotent to arrest its headway; 
and cases like these belong to the ultimate mystery 
of evil, concerning which I can only offer considera- 
tions tending toward religious patience at the end of 
this hour. My task, let me say now, is practically 
narrow, and my words are to deal only with that 
•metaphysical tedium vitce which is peculiar to reflect- 



Is Life Worth Living? 39 

ing men. Most of you are devoted, for good or ill, 
to the reflective life. Many of you are students of 
philosophy, and have already felt in your own per- 
sons the scepticism and unreality that too much 
grubbing in the abstract roots of things will breed. 
This is, indeed, one of the regular fruits of the over- 
studious career. Too much questioning and too 
little active responsibility lead, almost as often as 
too much sensualism does, to the edge of the slope, 
at the bottom of which lie pessimism and the night- 
mare or suicidal view of life. But to the diseases 
which reflection breeds, still further reflection can 
oppose effective remedies; and it is of the melan- 
» choly and Weltschmerz bred of reflection that I now 
proceed to speak. 

Let me say, immediately, that my final appeal is to 
• nothing more recondite than religious faith. So far 
as my argument is to be destructive, it will consist in 
nothing more than the sweeping away of certain views 
that often keep the springs of religious faith com- 
pressed ; and so far as it is to be constructive, it will 
consist in holding up to the light of day certain con- 
siderations calculated to let loose these springs in a 
normal, natural way. Pessimism is essentially a re- 
ligious disease. In the form of it to which you are 
most liable, it consists in nothing but a religious 
demand to which there comes no normal religious 
reply. 

Now, there are two stages of recovery from this 
disease, two different levels upon which one may 
emerge from the midnight view to the daylight 
view of things, and I must treat of them in turn. 
The second stage is the more complete and joyous, 
and it corresponds to the freer exercise of religious 




40 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

trust and fancy. There are, as is well known, per- 
sons who are naturally very free in this regard, others 
who are not at all so. There are persons, for instance, 
whom we find indulging to their heart's content in 
prospects of immortality; and there are others who 
experience the greatest difficulty in making such a 
notion seem real to themselves at all. These latter 
persons are tied to their senses, restricted to their 
natural experience ; and many of them, moreover, 
feel a sort of intellectual loyalty to what they call 
' hard facts,' which is positively shocked by the easy 
excursions into the unseen that other people make 
at the bare call of sentiment. Minds of either class 
may, however, be intensely religious. They may 
equally desire atonement and reconciliation, and 
crave acquiescence and communion with the .utal 
soul of things. But the craving, when the mind 
is pent in to the hard facts, especially as science 
now reveals them, can breed pessimism, quite as 
easily as it breeds optimism when it inspires re- 
ligious trust and fancy to wing their way to another 
and a better world. . 

That is why I call pessimism an essentially religious 
disease. The nightmare view of life has plenty of 
organic sources ; but its great reflective source has 
dt all times been the contradiction between the phe- 
nomena of nature and the craving of the heart to 
believe that behind nature there is a spirit whose 
expression nature is. What philosophers call ' nat- 
ural theology ' has been one way of appeasing this 
craving ; that poetry of nature in which our English 
literature is so rich has been another way. Now, 
suppose a mind of the latter of our two classes, whose 
imagination is pent in consequently, and who takes its 



Is Life Worth Living? 41 

facts ' hard ; ' suppose it, moreover, to feel strongly 
the craving for communion, and yet to realize how 
desperately difficult it is to construe the scientific 
order of nature either theologically or poetically, — 
and what result can there be but inner discord and 
contradiction? Now, this inner discord (merely as 
discord) can be relieved in either of two ways : The 
• longing to read the facts religiously may cease, and 
leave the bare facts by themselves; or, supplemen- 
tary facts may be discovered or believed-in, which 
permit the religious reading to go on. These two 
ways of relief are the two stages of recovery, the two 
levels of escape from pessimism, to which I made 
allusion a moment ago, and which the sequel will, 
I trust, make more clear. 



III. 

Starting then with nature, we naturally tend, if we 
have the religious craving, to say with Marcus Aure- 
lius, " O Universe ! what thou wishest I wish." Our 
sacred books and traditions tell us of one God who 
made heaven and earth, and, looking on them, saw 
that they were good. Yet, on more intimate acquain- 
tance, the visible surfaces of heaven and earth refuse 
to be brought by us into any intelligible unity at all. 
Every phenomenon that we would praise there exists 
cheek by jowl with some contrary phenomenon that 
cancels all its religious effect upon the mind. Beauty 
and hideousness, love and cruelty, life and death keep 
house together in indissoluble partnership ; and there 
gradually steals over us, instead of the old warm 
notion of a man-loving Deity, that of an awful power 
that neither hates nor loves, but rolls all things to- 



4 2 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

gether meaninglessly to a common doom. This is 
an uncanny, a sinister, a nightmare view of life, and 
its peculiar unheimlichkeit> or poisonousness, lies ex- 
pressly in our holding two things together which can- 
not possibly agree, — in our clinging, on the one 
hand, to the demand that there shall be a living spirit 
of the whole ; and, on the other, to the belief that 
the course of nature must be such a spirit's adequate 
manifestation and expression. It is in the contra- 
diction between the supposed being of a spirit that 
encompasses and owns us, and with which we ought 
to have some communion, and the character of such 
a spirit as revealed by the visible world's course, that 
this particular death-in-life paradox and this melan- 
choly-breeding puzzle reside. Carlyle expresses the 
result in that chapter of his immortal ' Sartor Resar- 
tus ' entitled ' The Everlasting No.' " I lived," writes 
poor Teufelsdrockh, " in a continual, indefinite, pining 
fear; tremulous, pusillanimous, apprehensive of I 
knew not what : it seemed as if all things in the heav- 
ens above and the earth beneath would hurt me ; as 
if the heavens and the earth were but boundless jaws 
of a devouring monster, wherein I, palpitating, lay 
waiting to be devoured." 

This is the first stage of speculative melancholy. 
No brute can have this sort of melancholy; no man 
who is irreligious can become its prey. It is the sick 
•shudder of the frustrated religious demand, and not 
the mere necessary outcome of animal experience. 
Teufelsdrockh himself could have made shift to face 
the general chaos and bedevilment of this world's 
experiences very well, were he not the victim of an 
originally unlimited trust and affection towards them. 
If he might meet them piecemeal, with no suspicion 



Is Life Worth Living? 43 

of any whole expressing itself in them, shunning the 
bitter parts and husbanding the sweet ones, as the 
occasion served, and as the day was foul or fair, he 
could have zigzagged toward an easy end, and felt 
no obligation to make the air vocal with his lamen- 
tations. The mood of levity, of ' I don't care,' is for 
this world's ills a sovereign and practical anaesthetic. | \ 
But, no ! something deep down in Teufelsdrockh and 
in the rest of us tells us that there is a Spirit in things * 
to which we owe allegiance, and for whose sake we 
must keep up the serious mood. And so the inner 
fever and discord also are kept up ; for nature taken 
on her visible surface reveals no such Spirit, and be- 
yond the facts of nature we are at the present stage 
of our inquiry not supposing ourselves to look. 

Now, I do not hesitate frankly and sincerely to con- 
fess to you that this real and genuine discord seems 
to me to carry with it the inevitable bankruptcy of 
natural religion naively and simply taken. There 
were times when Leibnitzes with their heads buried 
in monstrous wigs could compose Theodicies, and 
when stall-fed officials of an established church could 
prove by the valves in the heart and the round liga- 
ment of the hip-joint the existence of a " Moral and 
Intelligent Contriver of the World." But those times 
are past ; and we of the nineteenth century, with our 
evolutionary theories and our mechanical philoso- 
phies, already know nature too impartially and too 
i well to worship unreservedly any God of whose char- 
acter she can be an adequate expression. Truly, all 
we know of good and duty proceeds from nature; 
but none the less so all we know of evil. Visible 
nature is all plasticity and indifference, — a moral 
multiverse, as one might call it, and not a moral uni- 



\ 



44 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

verse. To such a harlot we owe no allegiance ; with 
her as a whole we can establish no moral commun- 
ion ; and we are free in our dealings with her several 
parts to obey or destroy, and to follow no law but 
that of prudence in coming to terms with such of her 
particular features as will help us to our private ends. 
If there be a divine Spirit of the universe, nature, 
such as we know her, cannot possibly be its ultimate 
word to man. Either there is no Spirit revealed in 
nature, or else it is inadequately revealed there ; and 
(as all the higher religions have assumed) what we 
call visible nature, or this world, must be but a veil 
and surface-show whose full meaning resides in a 
supplementary unseen or other world. 

I cannot help, therefore, accounting it on the whole 
a gain (though it may seem for certain poetic consti- 
tutions a very sad loss) that the naturalistic supersti- 
tion, the worship of the God of nature, simply taken 
as such, should have begun to loosen its hold upon 
the educated mind. In fact, if I am to express my 
personal opinion unreservedly, I should say (in spite 
of its sounding blasphemous at first to certain ears) 
that the initial step towards getting into healthy ulti- 
mate relations with the universe is the act of rebellion 
against the idea that such a God exists. Such rebel- 
lion essentially is that which in the chapter I have 
quoted from Carlyle goes on to describe : — 

" ' Wherefore, like a coward, dost thou forever pip and 
whimper, and go cowering and trembling? Despicable" 
biped ! . . . Hast thou not a heart ; canst thou not suffer 
whatsoever it be ; and, as a Child of Freedom, though out- 
cast, trample Tophet itself under thy feet, while it con- 
sumes thee ? Let it come, then ; I will meet it and defy it ! ' 
And as I so thought, there rushed like a stream of fire 



Is Life Worth Living? 45 

over my whole soul ; and I shook base Fear away from me 
forever. . . . 

" Thus had the Everlasting No pealed authoritatively through 
all the recesses of my being, of my Me ; and then was it 
that my whole Me stood up, in native God-created majesty, 
and recorded its Protest. Such a Protest, the most impor- 
tant transaction in life, may that same Indignation and Defi- 
ance, in a psychological point of view, be fitly called. The 
Everlasting No had said : ' Behold, thou art fatherless, out- 
cast, and the Universe is mine ; ' to which my whole Me 
now made answer : 'lam not thine, but Free, and forever 
hate thee ! ' From that hour," Teufelsdrockh-Carlyle adds, 
" I began to be a man." 

And our poor friend, James Thomson, similarly 
writes : — 

" Who is most wretched in this dolorous place ? 
I think myself ; yet I would rather be 
My miserable self than He, than He 
Who formed such creatures to his own disgrace. 

The vilest thing must be less vile than Thou 
From whom it had its being, God and Lord! 
Creator of all woe and sin ! abhorred, 

Malignant and implacable ! I vow 

That not for all Thy power furled and unfurled, 

For all the temples to Thy glory built, 

Would I assume the ignominious guilt 
Of having made such men in such a world." 

We are familiar enough in this community with the 
spectacle of persons exulting in their emancipation 
from belief in the God of their ancestral Calvinism, — 
him who made the garden and the serpent, and pre- 
appointed the eternal fires of hell. Some of them 
have found humaner gods to worship, others are sim- 
ply converts from all theology ; but, both alike, they 



4.6 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

assure us that to have got rid of the sophistication of 
thinking they could feel any reverence or duty toward 
that impossible idol gave a tremendous happiness to 
their souls. Now, to make an idol of the spirit of 
nature, and worship it, also leads to sophistication; 
and in souls that are religious and would also be 
scientific the sophistication breeds a philosophical 
melancholy, from which the first natural step of es- 
cape is the denial of the idol ; and with the downfall 
of the idol, whatever lack of positive joyousness may 
remain, there comes also the downfall of the whim- 
pering and cowering mood. With evil simply taken 
as such, men can make short work, for their relations 
with it then are only practical. It looms up no longer 
so spectrally, it loses all its haunting and perplexing 
significance, as soon as the mind attacks the instances 
of it singly, and ceases to worry about their derivation 
from the ' one and only Power.' 

Here, then, on this stage of mere emancipation 
from monistic superstition, the would-be suicide may 
already get encouraging answers to his question about 
the worth of life. There are in most men instinctive 
springs of vitality that respond healthily when the 
burden of metaphysical and infinite responsibility 
rolls off. The certainty that you now may step out 
of life whenever you please, and that to do so is not 
blasphemous or monstrous, is itself an immense relief. 
The thought of suicide is now no longer a guilty 
challenge and obsession. 

" This little life is all we must endure ; 
The grave's most holy peace is ever sure," — 

says Thomson ; adding, " I ponder these thoughts, 
and they comfort me." Meanwhile we can always 



Is Life Worth Living? 47 

stand it for twenty-four hours longer, if only to see 
what to-morrow's newspaper will contain, or what the 
next postman will bring. 

But far deeper forces than this mere vital curiosity 
are arousable, even in the pessimistically-tending 
mind ; for where the loving and admiring impulses 
are dead, the hating and fighting impulses will still 
respond to fit appeals. This evil which we feel so 
deeply is something that we can also help to over- 
throw ; for its sources, now that no ' Substance * or 
1 Spirit ' is behind them, are finite, and we can deal 
with each of them in turn. It is, indeed, a remark- 
able fact that sufferings and hardships do not, as a 
rule, abate the love of life ; they seem, on the con- 

» trary, usually to give it a keener zest. The sovereign 
source of melancholy is repletion. Need and strug- 
gle are what excite and inspire us ; our hour of tri- 
umph is what brings the void. Not the Jews of the 
captivity, but those of the days of Solomon's glory 
are those from whom the pessimistic utterances in 
our Bible come. Germany, when she lay trampled 
beneath the hoofs of Bonaparte's troopers, produced 
perhaps the most optimistic and idealistic literature 
that the world has seen; and not till the French 

• ' milliards ' were distributed after 1871 did pessimism 
overrun the country in the shape in which we see it 
there to-day. The history of our own race is one 
long commentary on the cheerfulness that comes with 
fighting ills. Or take the Waldenses, of whom I 
lately have been reading, as examples of what strong 
men will endure. In 1485 a papal bull of Innocent 
VIII. enjoined their extermination. It absolved those 
who should take up the crusade against them from all 
ecclesiastical pains and penalties, released them from 



48 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

any oath, legitimized their title to all property which 
they might have illegally acquired, and promised 
remission of sins to all who should kill the heretics. 

" There is no town in Piedmont," says aVaudois writer, 
" where some of our brethren have not been put to death. 
Jordan Terbano was burnt alive at Susa ; Hippolite Rossiero 
at Turin; Michael Goneto, an octogenarian, at Sarcena; 
Vilermin Ambrosio hanged on the Col di Meano ; Hugo 
Chiambs, of Fenestrelle, had his entrails torn from his living 
body at Turin ; Peter Geymarali of Bobbio in like manner 
had his entrails taken out in Lucerna, and a fierce cat thrust 
in their place to torture him further ; Maria Romano was 
buried alive at Rocca Patia ; Magdalena Fauno underwent 
the same fate at San Giovanni ; Susanna Michelini was 
bound hand and foot, and left to perish of cold and hunger • 
on the snow at Sarcena : Bartolomeo Fache, gashed with 
sabres, had the wounds filled up with quicklime, and per- 
ished thus in agony at Fenile ; Daniel Michelini had his 
tongue torn out at Bobbo for having praised God ; James 
Baridari perished covered with sulphurous matches which 
had been forced into his flesh under the nails, between the 
fingers, in the nostrils, in the lips, and all over the body, and 
then lighted ; Daniel Rovelli had his mouth filled with gun- 
powder, which, being lighted, blew his head to pieces ; . . . 
Sara Rostignol was slit open from the legs to the bosom, and 
left so to perish on the road between Eyral and Lucerna ; " 
Anna Charbonnier was impaled, and carried thus on a pike 
frorrt San Giovanni to La Torre." * 

Und dergleichen mehr ! In 1630 the plague swept 
away one-half of the Vaudois population, including 
fifteen of their seventeen pastors. The places of 
these were supplied from Geneva and Dauphiny, and 

1 Quoted by George E. Waring in his book on Tyrol. Compare 
A. Berard: Les Vaudois, Lvon, Storck, 1892 



Is Life Worth Living? 49 

the whole Vaudois people learned French in order to 
follow their services. More than once their number 
fell, by unremitting persecution, from the normal 
standard of twenty-five thousand to about four thou- 
sand. In 1686 the Duke of Savoy ordered the three 
thousand that remained to give up their faith or leave 
the country. Refusing, they fought the French and 
Piedmontese armies till only eighty of their fighting 
men remained alive or uncaptured, when they gave 
up, and were sent in a body to Switzerland. But in 
1689, encouraged by William of Orange and led by 
one of their pastor-captains, between eight hundred 
and nine hundred of them returned to conquer their 
old homes again. They fought their way to Bobi, 
reduced to four hundred men in the first half year, 
and met every force sent against them ; until at last 
the Duke of Savoy, giving up his alliance with that 
abomination of desolation, Louis XIV., restored them 
to comparative freedom, — since which time they have 
increased and multiplied in their barren Alpine val- 
leys to this day. 

What are our woes and sufferance compared with 
these? Does not the recital of such a fight so obsti- 
nately waged against such odds fill us with resolution 
against our petty powers of darkness, — machine 
politicians, spoilsmen, and the rest ? Life is worth 
living, no matter what it bring, if only such combats 
may be carried to successful terminations and one's 
heel set on the tyrant's throat. To the suicide, then, 
in his supposed world of multifarious and immoral 
nature, you can appeal — and appeal in the name of 
the very evils that make his heart sick there — to 
wait and see his part of the battle out. And the con- 
sent to live on, which you ask of him under these 

4 






50 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

circumstances, is not the sophistical ' resignation * 
which devotees of cowering religions preach : it is 
not resignation in the sense of licking a despotic 
Deity's hand. It is, on the contrary, a resignation 
based on manliness and pride. So long as your 
would-be suicide leaves an evil of his own unremedied, 
so long he has strictly no concern with evil in the 
abstract and at large. The submission which you 
demand of yourself to the general fact of evil in 
the world, your apparent acquiescence in it, is here 
nothing but the conviction that evil at large is none 
of your business until your business with your private 
particular evils is liquidated and settled up. A chal- 
lenge of this sort, with proper designation of detail, is 
one that need only be made to be accepted by men 
whose normal instincts are not decayed; and your 
reflective would-be suicide may easily be moved by 
it to face life with a certain interest again. The senti- 
ment of honor is a very penetrating thing. When 
you and I, for instance, realize how many innocent 
beasts have had to suffer in cattle-cars and slaughter- 
pens and lay down their lives that we might grow 
up, all fattened and clad, to sit together here in com- 
fort and carry on this discourse, it does, indeed, put 
our relation to the universe in a more solemn light. 
" Does not," as a young Amherst philosopher (Xenos 
Clark, now dead) once wrote, " the acceptance of 
a happy life upon such terms involve a point of 
honor?" Are we not bound to take some suffering 
upon ourselves, to do some self-denying service with 
our lives, in return for all those lives upon which ours 
are built? To hear this question is to answer it in 
but one possible way, if one have a normally consti- 
tuted heart. 






Is Life Worth Living? 51 

Thus, then, we see that mere instinctive curiosity, 
pugnacity, and honor may make life on a purely 
naturalistic basis seem worth living from day to day 
to men who have cast away all metaphysics in order 
to get rid of hypochondria, but who are resolved to 
owe nothing as yet to religion and its more positive 
gifts. A poor half-way stage, some of you may be 
inclined to say ; but at least you must grant it to be 
an honest stage ; and no man should dare to speak 
meanly of these instincts which are our nature's best 
equipment, and to which religion herself must in the 
last resort address her own peculiar appeals. 



IV. 

And now, in turning to what religion may have to 
say to the question, I come to what is the soul of my 
discourse. Religion has meant many things in hu- 
man history; but when from now onward I use the 
word I mean to use it in the supernaturalist sense, as 
declaring that the so-called order of nature, which 
constitutes this world's experience, is only one portion 
of the total universe, and that there stretches beyond 
this visible world an unseen world of which we now 
know nothing positive, but in its relation to which 
the true significance of our present mundane life con- 
sists. A man's religious faith (whatever more special 
items of doctrine it may involve) means for me essen- 
tially his faith in the existence of an unseen order of 
some kind in which the riddles of the natural order 
may be found explained. In the more developed 
religions the natural world has always been regarded 
as the mere scaffolding or vestibule of a truer, more 
eternal world, and affirmed to be a sphere of educa- 



/ 



52 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

tion, trial, or redemption. In these religions, one 
must in some fashion die to the natural life before 
one can enter into life eternal. The notion that this 
physical world of wind and water, where the sun rises 
and the moon sets, is absolutely and ultimately the 
divinely aimed-at and established thing, is one which 
we find only in very early religions, such as that of 
the most primitive Jews. It is this natural religion 
(primitive still, in spite of the fact that poets and 
men of science whose good-will exceeds their per- 
spicacity keep publishing it in new editions tuned 
to our contemporary ears) that, as I said a while ago, 
has suffered definitive bankruptcy in the opinion of a 
/circle of persons, among whom I must count myself, 
and who are growing more numerous every day. For 
such persons the physical order of nature, taken sim- 
ply as science knows it, cannot be held to reveal any 
one harmonious spiritual intent. It is mere weather, 
as Chauncey Wright called it, doing and undoing 
without end. 

Now, I wish to make you feel, if I can in the short 
remainder of this hour, that we have a right to believe 
the physical order to be only a partial order; that 
we have a right to supplement it by an unseen 
spiritual order which we assume on trust, if only 
thereby life may seem to us better worth living again. 
But as such a trust will seem to some of you sadly 
mystical and execrably unscientific, I must first say a 
word or two to weaken the veto which you may con- 
sider that science opposes to our act. 

There is included in human nature an ingrained 
naturalism and materialism of mind which can only 
admit facts that are actually tangible. Of this sort 
of mind the entity called 'science' is the idol. 



Is Life Worth Living? $3 

Fondness for the word ' scientist ' is one of the notes 
by which you may know its votaries ; and its short 
way of killing any opinion that it disbelieves in is to 
call it ' unscientific.' It must be granted that there 
is no slight excuse for this. Science has made such 
glorious leaps in the last three hundred years, and 
extended our knowledge of nature so enormously 
both in general and in detail ; men of science, more- 
over, have as a class displayed such admirable vir- 
tues, — that it is no wonder if the worshippers of 
science lose their head. In this very University, 
accordingly, I have heard more than one teacher say 
that all the fundamental conceptions of truth have 
already been found by science, and that the future 
has only the details of the picture to fill in. But the 
slightest reflection on the real conditions will suffice 
to show how barbaric such notions are. They show 
such a lack of scientific imagination, that it is hard to 
see how one who is actively advancing any part of 
science can make a mistake so crude. Think how 
many absolutely new scientific conceptions have 
arisen in our own generation, how many new prob- 
lems have been formulated that were never thought 
of before, and then cast an eye upon the brevity of 
science's career. It began with Galileo, not three 
hundred years ago. Four thinkers since Galileo, 
each informing his successor of what discoveries his 
own lifetime had seen achieved, might have passed 
the torch of science into our hands as we sit here in 
this room. Indeed, for the matter of that, an audi- 
ence much smaller than the present one, an audience 
of some five or six score people, if each person in 
it could speak for his own generation, would carry 
us away to the black unknown of the human species, 



54 Essays in Popular Philosophy. * 

to days without a document or monument to tell 
their tale. Is it credible that such a mushroom 
knowledge, such a growth overnight as this, can 
represent more than the minutest glimpse of what 
the universe will really prove to be when adequately 
understood?- No! our science is a drop, our igno- 
rance a sea. Whatever else be certain, this at least 
is certain, — that the world of our present natural 
knowledge is enveloped in a larger world of some 
sort of whose residual properties we at present can 
frame no positive idea. 

Agnostic positivism, of course, admits this prin- 
ciple theoretically in the most cordial terms, but 
insists that we must not turn it to any practical use. 
We have no right, this doctrine tells us, to dream 
dreams, or suppose anything about the unseen part 
of the universe, merely because to do so may be for 
what we are pleased to call our highest interests. 
We must always wait for sensible evidence for our 
beliefs ; and where such evidence is inaccessible we 
must frame no hypotheses whatever. Of course this 
is a safe enough position in abstracto. If a thinker 
had no stake in the unknown, no vital needs, to live 
or languish according to what the unseen world con- 
tained, a philosophic neutrality and refusal to believe 
either one way or the other would be his wisest cue. 
But, unfortunately, neutrality is not only inwardly 
difficult, it is also outwardly unrealizable, where our 
relations to an alternative are practical and vital. 
This is because, as the psychologists tell us, belief 
and doubt are living attitudes, and involve conduct 
on our part. Our only way, for example, of doubt- 
ing, or refusing to believe, that a certain thing is, is, 
continuing to act as if it were not If, for instance, 



Is Life Worth Living ? 55 

I refuse to believe that the room is getting cold, I 
leave the windows open and light no fire just as if it 
still were warm. If I doubt that you are worthy of 
my confidence, I keep you uninformed of all my 
secrets just as if you were z^worthy of the same. If 
I doubt the need of insuring my house, I leave it un- 
insured as much as if I believed there were no need. 
And so if I must not believe that the world is divine, 
I can only express that refusal by declining ever to 
act distinctively as if it were so, which can only mean 
acting on certain critical occasions as if it were not 
so, or in an irreligious way. There are, you see, in- 
evitable occasions in life when inaction is a kind of ac- 
tion, and must count as action, and when not to be for 
is to be practically against ; and in all such cases strict 
and consistent neutrality is an unattainable thing. 

And, after all, is not this duty of neutrality where 
only our inner interests would lead us to believe, the 
most ridiculous of commands? Is it not sheer dog- 
matic folly to say that our inner interests can have no 
real connection with the forces that the hidden world 
may contain? In other cases divinations based on 
inner interests have proved prophetic enough. Take 
science itself! Without an imperious inner demand 
on our part for ideal logical and mathematical harmo- 
nies, we should never have attained to proving that 
such harmonies lie hidden between all the chinks and 
interstices of the crude natural world. Hardly a 
law has been established in science, hardly a fact as- 
certained, which was not first sought after, often with 
sweat and blood, to gratify an inner need. Whence 
such needs come from we do not know: we find 
them in us, and biological psychology so far only 
classes them with Darwin's ' accidental variations.' 



56 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

But the inner need of believing that this world of 
nature is a sign of something more spiritual and 
eternal than itself is just as strong and authoritative 
in those who feel it, as the inner need of uniform laws 
of causation ever can be in a professionally scientific 
head. The toil of many generations has proved the 
latter need prophetic. Why may not the former one 
be prophetic, too? And if needs of ours outrun the 
\ visible universe, why may not that be a sign that 
I an invisible universe is there? What, in short, has 
authority to debar us from trusting our religious 
demands? Science as such assuredly has no author- 
ity, for she can only say what is, not what is not; 
and the agnostic " thou shalt not believe without 
coercive sensible evidence " is simply an expression 
(free to any one to make) of private personal appe- 
tite for evidence of a certain peculiar kind. 

Now, when I speak of trusting our religious de- 
mands, just what do I mean by ' trusting ' ? Is the 
word to carry with it license to define in detail an 
invisible world, and to anathematize and excommuni- 
cate those whose trust is different? Certainly not! 
Our faculties of belief were not primarily given us to 
make orthodoxies and heresies withal ; they were 
given us to live by. And to trust our religious de- 
mands means first of all to live in the light of them, 
and to act as if the invisible world which they sug- 
gest were real. It is a fact of human nature, that 
men can live and die by the help of a sort of faith 
that goes without a single dogma or definition. The 
bare assurance that this natural order is not ultimate 
but a mere sign or vision, the external staging of 
a many-storied universe, in which spiritual forces 
have the last word and are eternal, — this bare assur- 



/ 



Is Life Worth Living? 57 

ance is to such men enough to make life seem worth 
living in spite of every contrary presumption sug- 
gested by its circumstances on the natural plane. 
Destroy this inner assurance, however, vague as it is, 
and all the light and radiance of existence is extin- 
guished for these persons at a stroke. Often enough 
the wild-eyed look at life — the suicidal mood — will 
then set in. 

And now the application comes directly home to 
you and me. Probably to almost every one of us 
here the most adverse life would seem well worth 
living, if we only could be certain that our bravery 
and patience with it were terminating and eventuating 
and bearing fruit somewhere in an unseen spiritual 
world. But granting we are not certain, does it then 
follow that a bare trust in such a world is a fool's 
paradise and lubberland, or rather that it is a living 
attitude in which we are free to indulge? Well, we 
are free to trust at our own risks anything that is not 
impossible, and that can bring analogies to bear in its 
behalf. That the world of physics is probably not 
absolute, all the converging multitude of arguments 
that make in favor of idealism tend to prove ; and 
that our whole physical life may lie soaking in a spir- 
itual atmosphere, a dimension of being that we at 
present have no organ for apprehending, is vividly 
suggested to us by the analogy of the life of our 
domestic animals. Our dogs, for example, are in our 
human life but not of it. They witness hourly the 
outward body of events whose inner meaning cannot, 
by any possible operation, be revealed to their intelli- 
gence, — events in which they themselves often play 
the cardinal part. My terrier bites a teasing boy, for 
example, and the father demands damages. The dog 



58 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

may be present at every step of the negotiations, and 
see the money paid, without an inkling of what it all 
means, without a suspicion that it has anything to do 
with him ; and he never can know in his natural dog's 
life. Or take another case which used greatly to 
impress me in my medical-student days. Consider a 
poor dog whom they are vivisecting in a laboratory. 
He lies strapped on a board and shrieking at his exe- 
cutioners, and to his own dark consciousness is literally 
in a sort of hell. He cannot see a single redeeming 
ray in the whole business ; and yet all these diaboli- 
cal-seeming events are often controlled by human 
intentions with which, if his poor benighted mind 
could only be made to catch a glimpse of them, all 
that is heroic in him would religiously acquiesce. 
Healing truth, relief to future sufferings of beast and 
man, are to be bought by them. It may be genuinely 
a process of redemption. Lying on his back on the 
board there he may be performing a function incal- 
culably higher than any that prosperous canine life 
admits of; and yet, of the whole performance, this 
function is the one portion that must remain absolutely 
beyond his ken. 

Now turn from this to the life of man. In the 
dog's life we see the world invisible to him because 
we live in both worlds. In human life, although we 
only see our world, and his within it, yet encompass- 
ing both these worlds a still wider world may be 
there, as unseen by us as our world is by him ; and to 
believe in that world may be the most essential func- 
tion that our lives in this world have to perform- 
But " may be ! may be ! " one now hears the positivist 
contemptuously exclaim ; " what use can a scientific 
life have for maybes?" Well, I reply, the ' scien- 



Is Life Worth Living ? 59 

tific ' life itself has much to do with maybes, and human 
life at large has everything to do with them. So far 
as man stands for anything, and is productive or 
originative at all, his entire vital function may be said 
to have to deal with maybes. Not a victory is gained, 
not a deed of faithfulness or courage is done, except 
upon a maybe ; not a service, not a sally of generos- 
ity, not a scientific exploration or experiment or text- 
book, that may not be a mistake. It is only by risk- 
ing our persons from one hour to another that we 
live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand 
in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes 
the result come true. Suppose, for instance, that you 
are climbing a mountain, and have worked yourself 
into a position from which the only escape is by a 
terrible leap. Have faith that you can successfully 
make it, and your feet are nerved to its accomplish- 
ment. But mistrust yourself, and think of all the 
sweet things you have heard the scientists say of 
maybes, and you will hesitate so long that, at last, all 
unstrung and trembling, and launching yourself in a 
moment of despair, you roll in the abyss. In such a 
case (and it belongs to an enormous class), the part 
of wisdom as well as of courage is to believe what is 
in the line of your needs, for only by such belief is the 
need fulfilled. Refuse to believe, and you shall in- 
deed be right, for you shall irretrievably perish. But 
believe, and again you shall be right, for you shall 
save yourself. You make one or the other of two 
possible universes true by your trust or mistrust, — 
both universes having been only maybes, in this par- 
ticular, before you contributed your act. 

Now, it appears to me that the question whether 
life is worth living is subject to conditions logically 



60 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

much like these. It does, indeed, depend on you the 
liver. If you surrender to the nightmare view and 
crown the evil edifice by your own suicide, you have 
indeed made a picture totally black. Pessimism, 
completed by your act, is true beyond a doubt, so 
far as your world goes. Your mistrust of life has re- 
moved whatever worth your own enduring existence 
might have given to it; and now, throughout the 
whole sphere of possible influence of that existence, 
the mistrust has proved itself to have had divining 
power. But suppose, on the other hand, that instead 
of giving way to the nightmare view you cling to it 
that this world is not the ultimatum. Suppose you find 
yourself a very well-spring, as Wordsworth says, of — 

" Zeal, and the virtue to exist by faith 
As soldiers live by courage ; as, by strength 
Of heart, the sailor fights with roaring seas." 

Suppose, however thickly evils crowd upon you, that 
your unconquerable subjectivity proves to be their 
match, and that you find a more wonderful joy than 
any passive pleasure can bring in trusting ever in the 
larger whole. Have you not now made life worth 
living on these terms? What sort of a thing would 
life really be, with your qualities ready for a tussle 
with it, if it only brought fair weather and gave these 
higher faculties of yours no scope? Please remember 
that optimism and pessimism are definitions of the 
world, and that our own reactions on the world, small 
as they are in bulk, are integral parts of the whole 
thing, and necessarily help to determine the defini- 
tion. They may even be the decisive elements in 
determining the definition. A large mass can have 
its unstable equilibrium overturned by the addition 



Is Life Worth Living ? 61 

of a feather's weight; a long phrase may have its 
sense reversed by the addition of the three letters 
n-o-t. This life is worth living, we can say, since it 
is what we make it, from the moral point of view ; and 
we are determined to make it from that point of view, 
so far as we have anything to do with it, a success. 

Now, in this description of faiths that verify them- 
selves I have assumed that our faith in an invisible 
order is what inspires those efforts and that patience 
which make this visible order good for moral men. 
Our faith in the seen world's goodness (goodness now 
meaning fitness for successful moral and religious 
life) has verified itself by leaning on our faith in the 
unseen world. But will our faith in the unseen world 
similarly verify itself? Who knows? 

Once more it is a case of maybe ; and once more 
maybes are the essence of the situation. I confess 
that I do not see why the very existence of an invisi- 
ble world may not in part depend on the personal 
response which any one of us may make to the reli- 
gious appeal. God himself, in short, may draw vital 
strength and increase of very being from our fidelity. 
For my own part, I do not know what the sweat and 
blood and tragedy of this life mean, if they mean any- 
thing short of this. If this life be not a real fight, in 
which something is eternally gained for the universe 
by success, it is no better than a game of private the- 
atricals from which one may withdraw at will. But 
it feels like a real fight, — as if there were something 
really wild in the universe which we, with all our ide- 
alities and faithfulnesses, are needed to redeem ; and 
first of all to redeem our own hearts from atheisms 
and fears. For such a half-wild, half-saved universe 
our nature is adapted. The deepest thing in our 



62 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

nature is this Binnenleben (as a German doctor lately 
has called it)^ this dumb region of the heart'in which 
we dwell alone with our willingnesses and unwilling- 
nesses, our faiths and fears. As through the cracks 
and crannies of caverns those waters exude from 
the earth's bosom which then form the fountain-heads 
of springs, so in these crepuscular depths of person- 
ality the sources of all our outer deeds and decisions 
take their rise. Here is our deepest organ of com- 
munication with the nature of things ; and compared 
with these concrete movements of our soul all abstract 
statements and scientific arguments — the veto, for 
example, which the strict positivist pronounces upon 
our faith — sound to us like mere chatterings of the 
teeth. For here possibilities, not finished facts, are 
the realities with which we have actively to deal ; and 
to quote my friend William Salter, of the Philadelphia 
Ethical Society, " as the essence of courage is to stake 
one's life on a possibility, so the essence of faith is to 
believe that the possibility exists." 

These, then, are my last words to you : Be not 
afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and 
your belief will help create the fact. The ' scientific 
proof that you are right may not be clear before the 
day of judgment (or some stage of being which that 
expression may serve to symbolize) is reached. But 
the faithful fighters of this hour, or the beings that 
then and there will represent them, may then turn to 
the faint-hearted, who here decline to go on, with 
words like those with which Henry IV. greeted the 
tardy Crillon after a great victory had been gained : 
11 Hang yourself, brave Crillon ! we fought at Arques, 
and you were not there." 



The Sentiment of Rationality. 6j 



THE SENTIMENT OF RATIONALITY. 1 

I. 

WHAT is the task which philosophers set them- 
selves to perform ; and why do they philos- 
ophize at all? Almost every one will immediately 
reply: They desire to attain a conception of the 
frame of things which shall on the whole be more ra- 
tional than that somewhat chaotic view which every 
one by nature carries about with him under his hat. 
But suppose this rational conception attained, how is 
the philosopher to recognize it for what it is, and not 
let it slip through ignorance? The only answer can 
be that he will recognize its rationality as he recog- 
nizes everything else, by certain subjective marks 
with which it affects him. When he gets the marks, 
he may know that he has got the rationality. 

What, then, are the marks? A strong feeling of 
ease, peace, rest, is one of them. The transition 
from a state of puzzle and perplexity to rational com- 
prehension is full of lively relief and pleasure. 

But this relief seems to be a negative rather than 
a positive character. Shall we then say that the feel- 
ing of rationality is constituted merely by the absence 

1 This essay as far as page 75 consists of extracts from an article 
printed in Mind for July, 1879. Thereafter it is a reprint of an 
address to the Harvard Philosophical Club, delivered in 1880, and 
published in the Princeton Review, July, 1882. 



64 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

of any feeling of irrationality? I think there are very 
good grounds for upholding such a view. All feel- 
ing whatever, in the light of certain recent psy- 
chological speculations, seems to depend for its 
physical condition not on simple discharge of nerve- 
currents, but on their discharge under arrest, impedi- 
ment, or resistance. Just as we feel no particular 
pleasure when we breathe freely, but a very intense 
feeling of distress when the respiratory motions are 
prevented, — so any unobstructed tendency to action 
discharges itself without the production of much 
cogitative accompaniment, and any perfectly fluent 
course of thought awakens but little feeling; but 
when the movement is inhibited, or when the thought 
meets with difficulties, we experience distress. It is 
only when the distress is upon us that we can be said 
to strive, to crave, or to aspire. When enjoying 
plenary freedom either in the way of motion or of 
thought, we are in a sort of anaesthetic state in which 
we might say with Walt Whitman, if we cared to say 
anything about ourselves at such times, " I am suffi- 
cient as I am." This feeling of the sufficiency of the 
present moment, of its absoluteness, — this absence 
of all need to explain it, account for it, or justify it, — 
is what I call the Sentiment of Rationality. As soon, 
in short, as we are enabled from any cause whatever 
to think with perfect fluency, the thing we think of 
seems to us pro tanto rational. 

Whatever modes of conceiving the cosmos facili- 
tate this fluency, produce the sentiment of rationality. 
Conceived in such modes, being vouches for itself and 
needs no further philosophic formulation. But this 
fluency may be obtained in various ways ; and first 
I will take up the theoretic way. 



The Sentiment of Rationality. 65 

The facts of the world in their sensible diversity 
are always before us, but our theoretic need is that 
they should be conceived in a way that reduces their 
manifoldness to simplicity. Our pleasure at finding 
that a chaos of facts is the expression of a single 
underlying fact is like the relief of the musician at 
resolving a confused mass of sound into melodic or 
harmonic order. The simplified result is handled 
with far less mental effort than the original data ; and 
a philosophic conception of nature is thus in no 
metaphorical sense a labor-saving contrivance. The 
passion for parsimony, for economy of means in 
thought, is the philosophic passion par excellence ; 
and any character or aspect of the world's phenom- 
ena which gathers up their diversity into monotony 
will gratify that passion, and in the philosopher's 
mind stand for that essence of things compared with 
which all their other determinations may by him be 
overlooked. 

More universality or extensiveness is, then, one 
mark which the philosopher's conceptions must pos- 
sess. Unless they apply to an enormous number of 
cases they will not bring him relief. The knowledge 
of things by their causes, which is often given as a 
definition of rational knowledge, is useless to him 
unless the causes converge to a minimum number, 
while still producing the maximum number of effects. 
The more multiple then are the instances, the more 
flowingly does his mind rove from fact to fact. The 
phenomenal transitions are no real transitions ; each 
item is the same old friend with a slightly altered 
dress. 

Who does not feel the charm of thinking that the 
moon and the apple are, as far as their relation to the 

5 



66 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

earth goes, identical; of knowing respiration and 
combustion to be one ; of understanding that the 
balloon rises by the same law whereby the stone 
sinks ; of feeling that the warmth in one's palm when 
one rubs one's sleeve is identical with the motion 
which the friction checks ; of recognizing the differ- 
ence between beast and fish to be only a higher 
degree of that between human father and son; of 
believing our strength when we climb the mountain 
or fell the tree to be no other than the strength of 
the sun's rays which made the corn grow out of 
which we got our morning meal? 

But alongside of this passion for simplification 
there exists a sister passion, which in some minds — 
though they perhaps form the minority — is its rival. 
This is the passion for distinguishing; it is the im- 
pulse to be acquainted with, the parts rather than to 
comprehend the whole. Loyalty to clearness and 
integrity of perception, dislike of blurred outlines, of 
vague identifications, are its characteristics. It loves 
to recognize particulars in their full completeness, 
and the more of these it can carry the happier it is. 
It prefers any amount of incoherence, abruptness, and 
fragmentariness (so long as the literal details of the 
separate facts are saved) to an abstract way of con- 
ceiving things that, while it simplifies them, dissolves 
away at the same time their concrete fulness. Clear- 
ness and simplicity thus set up rival claims, and make 
a real dilemma for the thinker. 

A man's philosophic attitude is determined by the 
balance in him of these two cravings. No system 
of philosophy can hope to be universally accepted 
among men which grossly violates either need, or 



The Sentiment of Rationality. 67 

entirely subordinates the one to the other. The fate 
of Spinosa, with his barren union of all things in one 
substance, on the one hand; that of Hume, with 
his equally barren ' looseness and separateness ' of 
everything, on the other, — neither philosopher own- 
ing any strict and systematic disciples to-day, each 
being to posterity a warning as well as a stimulus, — 
show us that the only possible philosophy must be 
a compromise between an abstract monotony and a 
concrete heterogeneity. But the only way to mediate 
between diversity and unity is to class the diverse 
items as cases of a common essence which you dis- 
cover in them. Classification of things into exten- 
sive ' kinds ' is thus the first step ; and classification 
of their relations and conduct into extensive ' laws ' 
is the last step, in their philosophic unification. A 
completed theoretic philosophy can thus never be 
anything more than a completed classification of the 
world's ingredients; and its results must always be 
abstract, since the basis of every classification is 
the abstract essence embedded in the living fact, — 
the rest of the living fact being for the time ignored 
by the classifier. This means that none of our 
explanations are complete. They subsume things 
under heads wider or more familiar; but the last 
heads, whether of things or of their connections, are 
mere abstract genera, data which we just find in 
things and write down. 

When, for example, we think that we have rationally 
explained the connection of the facts A and B by 
classing both under their common attribute x, it is 
obvious that we have really explained only so much 
of these items as is x. To explain the connection of 
choke-damp and suffocation by the lack of oxygen is 



68 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

to leave untouched all the other peculiarities both of 
choke-damp and of suffocation, — such as convulsions 
and agony on the one hand, density and explosibility 
on the other. In a word, so far as A and B contain 
/, m, n, and o, p, q, respectively, in addition to x, they 
are not explained by x. Each additional particu- 
larity makes its distinct appeal. A single explana- 
tion of a fact only explains it from a single point of 
view. The entire fact is not accounted for until each 
and all of its characters have been classed with their 
likes elsewhere. To apply this now to the case of 
the universe, we see that the explanation Of the 
world by molecular movements explains it only so 
far as it actually is such movements. To invoke the 
' Unknowable ' explains only so much as is unknow- 
able, ' Thought ' only so much as is thought, ' God ' 
only so much as is God. Which thought? Which 
God ? — are questions that have to be answered by 
bringing in again the residual data from which the 
general term was abstracted. All those data that 
cannot be analytically identified with the attribute 
invoked as universal principle, remain as independent 
kinds or natures, associated empirically with the said 
attribute but devoid of rational kinship with it. 

Hence the unsatisfactoriness of all our specula- 
tions. On the one hand, so far as they retain any 
multiplicity in their terms, they fail to get us out of 
the empirical sand-heap world ; on the other, so far 
as they eliminate multiplicity the practical man des- 
pises their empty barrenness. The most they can say 
is that the elements of the world are such and such, 
and that each is identical with itself wherever found ; 
but the question Where is it found? the practical man 
is left to answer by his own wit. Which, of all the 



The Sentiment of Rationality. 69 

essences, shall here and now be held the essence of 
this concrete thing, the fundamental philosophy never 
attempts to decide. We are thus led to the con- 
clusion that the simple classification of things is, on 
the one hand, the best possible theoretic philosophy, 
but is, on the other, a most miserable and inadequate 
substitute for the fulness of the truth. It is a mon- 
strous abridgment of life, which, like all abridgments 
is got by the absolute loss and casting out of real 
matter. This is why so few human beings truly care 
for philosophy. The particular determinations which 
she ignores are the real matter exciting needs, quite 
as potent and authoritative as hers. What does the 
moral enthusiast care for philosophical ethics? Why 
does the ALsthetik of every German philosopher ap- 
pear to the artist an abomination of desolation ? 

Grau, theurer Freund, ist alle Theorie 
Und griin des Lebens goldner Baum. 

The entire man, who feels all needs by turns, will take 
nothing as an equivalent for life but the fulness of 
living itself. Since the essences of things are as a 
matter of fact disseminated through the whole extent 
of time and space, it is in their spread-outness and 
alternation that he will enjoy them. When weary of 
the concrete clash and dust and pettiness, he will 
refresh himself by a bath in the eternal springs, or 
fortify himself by a look at the immutable natures. 
But he will only be a visitor, not a dweller in the 
region; he will never carry the philosophic yoke 
upon his shoulders, and when tired of the gray mono- 
tony of her problems and insipid spaciousness of her 
results, will always escape gleefully into the teeming 
and dramatic richness of the concrete world. 



70 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

So our study turns back here to its beginning. 
Every way of classifying a thing is but a way of 
handling it for some particular purpose. Concep- 
tions, ' kinds,' are teleological instruments. No ab- 
stract concept can be a valid substitute for a concrete 
reality except with reference to a particular interest 
in the conceiver. The interest of theoretic rationality, 
the relief of identification, is but one of a thousand 
human purposes. When others rear their heads, it 
must pack up its little bundle and retire till its turn 
recurs. The exaggerated dignity and value that 
philosophers have claimed for their solutions is thus 
greatly reduced. The only virtue their theoretic con- 
ception need have is simplicity, and a simple concep- 
tion is an equivalent for the world only so far as the 
world is simple, — the world meanwhile, whatever 
simplicity it may harbor, being also a mightily com- 
plex affair. Enough simplicity remains, however, 
and enough urgency in our craving to reach it, to 
make the theoretic function one of the most invincible 
of human impulses. The quest of the fewest ele- 
ments of things is an ideal that some will follow, as 
long as there are men to think at all. 

But suppose the goal attained. Suppose that at 
last we have a system unified in the sense that has 
been explained. Our world can now be conceived 
simply, and our mind enjoys the relief. Our univer- 
sal concept has made the concrete chaos rational. 
But now I ask, Can that which is the ground of ra- 
tionality in all else be itself properly called rational? 
It would seem at first sight that it might. One is 
tempted at any rate to say that, since the craving for 
rationality is appeased by the identification of one 



The Sentiment of Rationality. 71 

thing with another, a datum which left nothing else 
outstanding might quench that craving definitively, 
or be rational in se. No otherness being left to annoy 
us, we should sit down at peace. In other words, as 
the theoretic tranquillity of the boor results from his 
spinning no further considerations about his chaotic 
universe, so any datum whatever (provided it were 
simple, clear, and ultimate) ought to banish puzzle 
from the universe of the philosopher and confer 
peace, inasmuch as there would then be for him 
absolutely no further considerations to spin. 

This in fact is what some persons think. Professor 
Bain says, — 

" A difficulty is solved, a mystery unriddled, when it can 
be shown to resemble something else ; to be an example of 
a fact already known. Mystery is isolation, exception, or it 
may be apparent contradiction : the resolution of the mystery 
is found in assimilation, identity, fraternity. When all things 
are assimilated, so far as assimilation can go, so far as like- 
ness holds, there is an end to explanation ; there is an end 
to what the mind can do, or can intelligently desire. . . . 
The path of science as exhibited in modern ages is toward 
generality, wider and wider, until we reach the highest, the 
widest laws of every department of things ; there explanation 
is finished, mystery ends, perfect vision is gained." 

But, unfortunately, this first answer will not hold. 
Our mind is so wedded to the process of seeing an 
other beside every item of its experience, that when 
the notion of an absolute datum is presented to it, it 
goes through its usual procedure and remains point- 
ing at the void beyond, as if in that lay further matter 
for contemplation. In short, it spins for itself the 
further positive consideration of a nonentity envel- 



72 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

oping the being of its datum ; and as that leads no- 
where, back recoils the thought toward its datum 
again. But there is no natural bridge between nonen- 
tity and this particular datum, and the thought stands 
oscillating to and fro, wondering " Why was there any- 
thing but nonentity; why just this universal datum 
and not another?" and finds no end, in wandering 
mazes lost. Indeed, Bain's words are so untrue that 
in reflecting men it is just when the attempt to fuse 
the manifold into a single totality has been most 
successful, when the conception of the universe as a 
unique fact is nearest its perfection, that the craving 
for further explanation, the ontological wonder-sick- 
ness, arises in its extremest form. As Schopenhauer 
says, " The uneasiness which keeps the never-resting 
clock of metaphysics in motion, is the consciousness 
that the non-existence of this world is just as possible 
as its existence." 

The notion of nonentity may thus be called the 
parent of the philosophic craving in its subtilest and 
profoundest sense. Absolute existence is absolute 
mystery, for its relations with the nothing remain 
unmediated to our understanding. One philosopher 
only has pretended to throw a logical bridge over 
this chasm. Hegel, by trying to show that nonen- 
tity and concrete being are linked together by a 
series of identities of a synthetic kind, binds every- 
thing conceivable into a unity, with no outlying no- 
tion to disturb the free rotary circulation of the mind 
within its bounds. Since such unchecked movement 
gives the feeling of rationality, he must be held, if 
he has succeeded, to have eternally and absolutely 
quenched all rational demands. 

But for those who deem Hegel's heroic effort to 



The Sentiment of Rationality. 73 

have failed, nought remains but to confess that when 
all things have been unified to the supreme degree, 
the notion of a possible other than the actual may still 
haunt our imagination and prey upon our system. 
The bottom of being is left logically opaque to us, 
as something which we simply come upon and find, 
and about which (if we wish to act) we should pause 
and wonder as little as possible. The philosopher's 
logical tranquillity is thus in essence no other than 
the boor's. They differ only as to the point at which 
each refuses to let further considerations upset the 
absoluteness of the data he assumes. The boor does 
so immediately, and is liable at any moment to the 
ravages of many kinds of doubt. The philosopher 
does not do so till unity has been reached, and is 
warranted against the inroads of those considerations, 
but only practically, not essentially, secure from the 
blighting breath of the ultimate Why? If he cannot 
exorcise this question, he must ignore or blink it, and, 
assuming the data of his system as something given, 
and the gift as ultimate, simply proceed to a life of 
contemplation or of action based on it. There is no 
doubt that this acting on an opaque necessity is ac- 
companied by a certain pleasure. See the reverence 
of Carlyle for brute fact: "There is an infinite sig- 
nificance in fact." " Necessity," says Dtihring, and 
he means not rational but given necessity, " is the 
last and highest point that we can reach. ... It is 
not only the interest of ultimate and definitive knowl- 
edge, but also that of the feelings, to find a last repose 
and an ideal equilibrium in an uttermost datum which 
can simply not be other than it is." 

Such is the attitude of ordinary men in their the- 
ism, God's fiat being in physics and morals such an 



74 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

uttermost datum. Such also is the attitude of all hard 
minded analysts and Verstandesmenschen. Lotze, 
Renouvier, and Hodgson promptly say that of expe- 
rience as a whole no account can be given, but nei- 
ther seek to soften the abruptness of the confession 
nor to reconcile us with our impotence. 

But mediating attempts may be made by more mys- 
tical minds. The peace of rationality may be sought 
through ecstasy when logic fails. To religious per- 
sons of every shade of doctrine moments come when 
the world, as it is, seems so divinely orderly, and the 
acceptance of it by the heart so rapturously com- 
plete, that intellectual questions vanish; nay, the 
intellect itself is hushed to sleep, — as Wordsworth 
says, "thought is not; in enjoyment it expires." 
Ontological emotion so fills the soul that ontologi- 
cal speculation can no longer overlap it and put 
her girdle of interrogation-marks round existence. 
Even the least religious of men must have felt with 
Walt Whitman, when loafing on the grass on some 
transparent summer morning, that " swiftly arose and 
spread round him the peace and knowledge that pass 
all the argument of the earth." At such moments 
of energetic living we feel as if there were something 
diseased and contemptible, yea vile, in theoretic* 
grubbing and brooding. In the eye of healthy sense 
the philosopher is at best a learned fool. 

Since the heart can thus wall out the ultimate irra- 
tionality which the head ascertains, the erection of its 
procedure into a systematized method would be a 
philosophic achievement of first-rate importance. But 
as used by mystics hitherto it has lacked universality, 
being available for few persons and at few times, and 



The Sentiment of Rationality. 75 

» 
even in these being apt to be followed by fits of reac- 
tion and dryness ; and if men should agree that the 
mystical method is a subterfuge without logical perti- 
nency, a plaster but no cure, and that the idea of non- 
entity can never be exorcised, empiricism will be the 
ultimate philosophy. Existence then will be a brute 
fact to which as a whole the emotion of ontologic 
wonder shall rightfully cleave, but remain eternally 
unsatisfied. Then wonderfulness or mysteriousness 
will be an essential attribute of the nature of things, 
and the exhibition and emphasizing of it will con- 
tinue to be an ingredient in the philosophic industry 
of the race. Every generation will produce its Job, 
its Hamlet, its Faust, or its Sartor Resartus. 

With this we seem to have considered the possibili- 
ties of purely theoretic rationality. But we saw at the 
outset that rationality meant only unimpeded mental 
function. Impediments that arise in the theoretic 
sphere might perhaps be avoided if the stream of 
mental action should leave that sphere betimes and 
pass into the practical. Let us therefore inquire what 
constitutes the feeling of rationality in its practical 
aspect. If thought is not to stand forever pointing 
at the universe in wonder, if its movement is to be 
diverted from the issueless channel of purely theoretic 
contemplation, let us ask what conception of the uni- 
verse will awaken active impulses capable of effecting 
this diversion. A definition of the world which will 
give back to the mind the free motion which has been 
blocked in the purely contemplative path may so far 
make the world seem rational again. 

Well, of two conceptions equally fit to satisfy the 
logical demand, that one which awakens the active 



y6 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

impulses, or satisfies other aesthetic demands better 
than the other, will be accounted the more rational 
conception, and will deservedly prevail. 

There is nothing improbable in the supposition 
that an analysis of the world may yield a number of 
formulae, all consistent with the facts. In physical 
science different formulae may explain the phenomena 
equally well, — the one-fluid and the two-fluid theories 
of electricity, for example. Why may it not be so 
with the world? Why may there not be different 
points of view for surveying it, within each of which 
all data harmonize, and which the observer may there- 
fore either choose between, or simply cumulate one 
upon another? A Beethoven string-quartet is truly, 
as some one has said, a scraping of horses' tails on 
cats' bowels, and may be exhaustively described in 
such terms ; but the application of this description 
in no way precludes the simultaneous applicability of 
an entirely different description. Just so a thorough- 
going interpretation of the world in terms of me- 
chanical sequence is compatible with its being inter- 
preted teleologically, for the mechanism itself may be 
designed. 

If, then, there were several systems excogitated, 
equally satisfying to our purely logical needs, they 
would still have to be passed in review, and approved 
or rejected by our aesthetic and practical nature. Can 
we define the tests of rationality which these parts of 
our nature would use ? 

Philosophers long ago observed the remarkable 
fact that mere familiarity with things is able to pro- 
duce a feeling of their rationality. The empiricist 
school has been so much struck by this circumstance 



The Sentiment of Rationality. 77 

as to have laid it down that the feeling of rationality 
and the feeling of familiarity are one and the same 
thing, and that no other kind of rationality than 
this exists. The daily contemplation of phenomena 
juxtaposed in a certain order begets an acceptance 
of their connection, as absolute as the repose engen- 
dered by theoretic insight into their coherence. To 
explain a thing is to pass easily back to its antece- 
dents ; to know it is easily to foresee its consequents. 
Custom, which lets us do both, is thus the source 
of whatever rationality the thing may gain in our 
thought. 

In the broad sense in which rationality was defined 
at the outset of this essay, it is perfectly apparent 
that custom must be one of its factors. We said that 
any perfectly fluent and easy thought was devoid of 
the sentiment of irrationality. Inasmuch then as cus- 
tom acquaints us with all the relations of a thing, it 
teaches us to pass fluently from that thing to others, 
and pro tanto tinges it with the rational character. 

Now, there is one particular relation of greater 
practical importance than all the rest, — I mean the 
relation of a thing to its future consequences. So 
long as an object is unusual, our expectations are 
baffled; they are fully determined as soon as it 
becomes familiar. I therefore propose this as the 
first practical requisite which a philosophic concep- 
tion must satisfy : // must, in a general way at least, 
banish uncertainty from the future. The permanent 
presence of the sense of futurity in the mind has been 
strangely ignored by most writers, but the fact is that 
our consciousness at a given moment is never free 
from the ingredient of expectancy. Every one knows 
how when a painful thing has to be undergone in the 



78 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

near future, the vague feeling that it is impending pen- 
etrates all our thought with uneasiness and subtly 
vitiates our mood even when it does not control our 
attention ; it keeps us from being at rest, at home in 
the given present. The same is true when a great 
happiness awaits us. But when the future is neutral 
and perfectly certain, 'we do not mind it,' as we say, 
but give an undisturbed attention to the actual. Let 
now this haunting sense of futurity be thrown off its 
bearings or left without an object, and immediately 
uneasiness takes possession of the mind. But in 
every novel or unclassified experience this is just 
what occurs ; we do not know what will come 
next ; and novelty per se becomes a mental irritant, 
while custom per se is a mental sedative, merely 
because the one baffles while the other settles our 
expectations. 

Every reader must feel the truth of this. What is 
meant by coming ' to feel at home ' in a new place, 
or with new people ? It is simply that, at first, when 
we take up our quarters in a new room, we do not 
know what draughts may blow in upon our back, 
what doors may open, what forms may enter, what 
interesting objects may be found in cupboards and 
corners. When after a few days we have learned the 
range of all these possibilities, the feeling of strange- 
ness disappears. And so it does with people, when 
we have got past the point of expecting any essen- 
tially new manifestations from their character. 

The utility of this emotional effect of expectation 
is perfectly obvious ; ' natural selection,' in fact, was 
bound to bring it about sooner or later. It is of the 
utmost practical importance to an animal that he 
should have prevision of the qualities of the objects 



The Sentiment of Rationality. 79 

that surround him, and especially that he should not 
come to rest in presence of circumstances that might 
be fraught either with peril or advantage, — go to 
sleep, for example, on the brink of precipices, in the 
dens of enemies, or view with indifference some new- 
appearing object that might, if chased, prove an 
important addition to the larder. Novelty ought to 
irritate him. All curiosity has thus a practical gene- 
sis. We need only look at the physiognomy of a 
dog or a horse when a new object comes into his 
view, his mingled fascination and fear, to see that the 
element of conscious insecurity or perplexed expecta- 
tion lies at the root of his emotion. A dog's curi- 
osity about the movements of his master or a strange 
object only extends as far as the point of deciding 
what is going to happen next. That settled, curi- 
osity is quenched. The dog quoted by Darwin, 
whose behavior in presence of a newspaper moved 
by the wind seemed to testify to a sense ' of the 
supernatural,' was merely exhibiting the irritation of 
an uncertain future. A newspaper which could move 
spontaneously was in itself so unexpected that the 
poor brute could not tell what new wonders the next 
moment might bring forth. 

To turn back now to philosophy. An ultimate 
datum, even though it be logically unrationalized, 
will, if its quality is such as to define expectancy, be 
peacefully accepted by the mind ; while if it leave 
the least opportunity for ambiguity in the future, it 
will to that extent cause mental uneasiness if not 
distress. Now, in the ultimate explanations of the 
universe which the craving for rationality has elicited 
from the human mind, the demands of expectancy to 
be satisfied have always played a fundamental part 



80 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

The term set up by philosophers as primordial has 
been one which banishes the incalculable. ' Sub- 
stance/ for example, means, as Kant says, das 
Bekarrliche, which will be as it has been, because its 
being is essential and eternal. And although we 
may not be able to prophesy in detail the future 
phenomena to which the substance shall give rise, we 
may set our minds at rest in a general way, when 
we have called the substance God, Perfection, Love, 
or Reason, by the reflection that whatever is in store 
for us can never at bottom be inconsistent with the 
character of this term ; so that our attitude even to- 
ward the unexpected is in a general sense defined. 
Take again the notion of immortality, which for com- 
mon people seems to be the touchstone of every 
philosophic or religious creed : what is this but a 
way of saying that the determination of expectancy 
is the essential factor of rationality? The wrath 
of science against miracles, of certain philosophers 
against the doctrine of free-will, has precisely the 
same root, — dislike to admit any ultimate factor in 
things which may rout our prevision or upset the 
stability of our outlook. 

Anti-substantialist writers strangely overlook this 
function in the doctrine of substance : " If there be 
such a substratum" says Mill, " suppose it at this 
instant miraculously annihilated, and let the sensa- 
tions continue to occur in the same order, and how 
would the substratum be missed? By what signs 
should we be able to discover that its existence had 
terminated? Should we not have as much reason to 
believe that it still existed as we now have ? And if 
we should not then be warranted in believing it, how 
can we be so now?" Truly enough, if we have 



The Sentiment of Rationality. 81 

already securely bagged our facts in a certain order, 
we can dispense with any further warrant for that 
order. But with regard to the facts yet to come the 
case is far different. It does not follow that if sub- 
stance may be dropped from our conception of the 
irrecoverably past, it need be an equally empty com- 
plication to our notions of the future. Even if it 
were true that, for aught we know to the contrary, 
the substance might develop at any moment a wholly 
new set of attributes, the mere logical form of re- 
ferring things to a substance would still (whether 
rightly or wrongly) remain accompanied by a feeling 
of rest and future confidence. In spite of the acutest 
nihilistic criticism, men will therefore always have a 
liking for any philosophy which explains things pet 
substantiam. 

A very natural reaction against the theosophizing 
conceit and hide-bound confidence in the upshot of 
things, which vulgarly optimistic minds display, has 
formed one factor of the scepticism of empiricists, 
who never cease to remind us of the reservoir of pos- 
sibilities alien to our habitual experience which the 
cosmos may contain, and which, for any warrant we 
have to the contrary, may turn it inside out to-morrow. 
Agnostic substantialism like that of Mr. Spencer, 
whose Unknowable is not merely the unfathomable 
but the absolute-irrational, on which, if consistently 
represented in thought, it is of course impossible to 
count, performs the same function of rebuking a cer- 
tain stagnancy and smugness in the manner in which 
the ordinary philistine feels his security. But con- 
sidered as anything else than as reactions against an 
opposite excess, these philosophies of uncertainty 
cannot be acceptable; the general mind will fail to 



82 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

£ome to rest in their presence, and will seek for solu- 
tions of a more reassuring kind. 

We may then, I think, with perfect confidence lay 
down as a first point gained in our inquiry, that a 
prime factor in the philosophic craving is the desire 
to have expectancy defined ; and that no philosophy 
will definitively triumph which in an emphatic manner 
denies the possibility of gratifying this need. 

We pass with this to the next great division of our 
topic. It is not sufficient for our satisfaction merely 
to know the future as determined, for it may be deter- 
mined in either of many ways, agreeable or disagree- 
able. For a philosophy to succeed on a universal 
scale it must define the future congruously with our 
spontaneous powers. A philosophy may be unim- 
peachable in other respects, but either of two defects 
will be fatal to its universal acceptance. First, its 
ultimate principle must not be one that essentially 
baffles and disappoints our dearest desires and most 
cherished powers. A pessimistic principle like Scho- 
penhauer's incurably vicious Will-substance, or Hart- 
mann's wicked jack-of-all-trades the Unconscious, will 
perpetually call forth essays at other philosophies. 
Incompatibility of the future with their desires and ac- 
tive tendencies is, in fact, to most men a source of more 
fixed disquietude than uncertainty itself. Witness 
the attempts to overcome the f problem of evil,' the 
'mystery of pain.' There is no 'problem of good.' 

But a second and worse defect in a philosophy 
than that of contradicting our active propensities is 
to give them no object whatever to press against. A 
philosophy whose principle is so incommensurate 
with our most intimate powers as to deny them all 



The Sentiment of Rationality. 83 

relevancy in universal affairs, as to annihilate their 
motives at one blow, will be even more unpopular 
than pessimism. Better face the enemy than the 
eternal Void ! This is why materialism will always 
fail of universal adoption, however well it may fuse 
things into an atomistic unity, however clearly it may 
prophesy the future eternity. For materialism denies 
reality to the objects of almost all the impulses which 
we most cherish. The real meaning of the impulses, 
it says, is something which has no emotional interest 
for us whatever. Now, what is called ' extradition * 
is quite as characteristic of our emotions as of our 
senses : both point to an object as the cause of the 
present feeling. What an intensely objective refer- 
ence lies in fear ! In like manner an enraptured man 
and a dreary-feeling man are not simply aware of 
their subjective states ; if they were, the force of their 
feelings would all evaporate. Both believe there is 
outward cause why they should feel as they do: 
either, " It is a glad world ! how good life is ! " or, 
" What a loathsome tedium is existence ! " Any 
philosophy which annihilates the validity of the ref- 
erence by explaining away its objects or translating 
them into terms of no emotional pertinency, leaves the 
mind with little to care or act for. This is the op- 
posite condition from that of nightmare, but when 
acutely brought home to consciousness it produces 
a kindred horror. In nightmare we have motives 
to act, but no power ; here we have powers, but no 
motives. A nameless u?iheimlichkeit comes over us 
at the thought of there being nothing eternal in our 
final purposes, in the objects of those loves and aspi- 
rations which are our deepest energies. The mon- 
strously lopsided equation of the universe and its 



84 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

knower, which we postulate as the ideal of cognition, 
is perfectly paralleled by the no less lopsided equa- 
tion of the universe and the doer. We demand in it 
a character for which our emotions and active pro- 
pensities shall be a match. Small as we are, minute 
as is the point by which the cosmos impinges upon 
each one of us, each one desires to feel that his reac- 
tion at that point is congruous with the demands of 
the vast whole, — that he balances the latter, so to 
speak, and is able to do what it expects of him. But 
as his abilities to do lie wholly in the line of his natu- 
ral propensities ; as he enjoys reacting with such emo- 
tions as fortitude, hope, rapture, admiration, earnest- 
ness, and the like ; and as he very unwillingly reacts 
with fear, disgust, despair, or doubt, — a philosophy 
which should only legitimate emotions of the latter 
sort would be sure to leave the mind a prey to discon- 
tent and craving. 

It is far too little recognized how entirely the intel- 
lect is built up of practical interests. The theory of 
evolution is beginning to do very good service by its 
reduction of all mentality to the type of reflex action. 
Cognition, in this view, is but a fleeting moment, a 
cross-section at a certain point, of what in its totality 
is a motor phenomenon. In the lower forms of life 
no one will pretend that cognition is anything more 
than a guide to appropriate action. The germinal 
question concerning things brought for the first time 
before consciousness is not the theoretic ' What is 
that?' but the practical ■ Who goes there? ' or rather, 
as Horwicz has admirably put it, ' What is to be 
done?' — 'Was fang' ich an?' In all our discus- 
sions about the intelligence of lower animals, the only 
test we use is that of their acting 1 as if for a purpose. 



The Sentiment of Rationality. 85 

Cognition, in short, is incomplete until discharged in 
act ; and although it is true that the later mental de- 
velopment, which attains its maximum through the 
hypertrophied cerebrum of man, gives birth to a vast 
amount of theoretic activity over and above that 
which is immediately ministerial to practice, yet the 
earlier claim is only postponed, not effaced, and the 
active nature asserts its rights to the end. 

When the cosmos in its totality is the object offered 
to consciousness, the relation is in no whit altered. 
React on it we must in some congenial way. It was 
a deep instinct in Schopenhauer which led him to 
reinforce his pessimistic argumentation by a running 
volley of invective against the practical man and his 
requirements. No hope for pessimism unless he is 
slain ! 

Helmholtz's immortal works on the eye and ear are 
to a great extent little more than a commentary on 
the law that practical utility wholly determines which 
parts of our sensations we shall be aware of, and 
which parts we shall ignore. We notice or discrimi- 
nate an ingredient of sense only so far as we depend 
upon it to modify our actions. We comprehend a 
thing when we synthetize it by identity with another 
thing. But the other great department of our under- 
standing, acquaintance (the two departments being 
recognized in all languages by the antithesis of such 
words as wissen and kennen ; scire and noscere, etc.), 
what is that also but a synthesis, — a synthesis of a 
passive perception with a certain tendency to reac- 
tion ? We are acquainted with a thing as soon as we 
have learned how to behave towards it, or how to 
meet the behavior which we expect from it. Up to 
that point it is still ' strange ' to us. 



86 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

If there be anything at all in this view, it follows 
that however vaguely a philosopher may define the 
ultimate universal datum, he cannot be said to leave 
it unknown to us so long as he in the slightest degree 
pretends that our emotional or active attitude toward 
it should be of one sort rather than another. He 
who says " life is real, life is earnest," however much 
he may speak of the fundamental mysteriousness of 
things, gives a distinct definition to that mysterious- 
ness by ascribing to it the right to claim from us the 
particular mood called seriousness, — which means the 
willingness to live with energy, though energy bring 
pain. The same is true of him who says that all is 
vanity. For indefinable as the predicate ' vanity ' may 
be in se, it is clearly something that permits anaesthe- 
sia, mere escape from suffering, to be our rule of life. 
There can be no greater incongruity than for a disciple 
of Spencer to proclaim with one breath that the sub- 
stance of things is unknowable, and with the next that 
the thought of it should inspire us with awe, reverence, 
and a willingness to add our co-operative push in the 
direction toward which its manifestations seem to be 
drifting. The unknowable may be unfathomed, but 
if it make such distinct demands upon our activity we 
surely are not ignorant of its essential quality. 

If we survey the field of history and ask what 
feature all great periods of revival, of expansion of 
the human mind, display in common, we shall find, I 
think, simply this : that each and all of them have 
said to the human being, " The inmost nature of the 
reality is congenial to powers which you possess." 
In what did the emancipating message of primitive 
Christianity consist but in the announcement that 



The Sentiment of Rationality. 87 

God recognizes those weak and tender impulses 
which paganism had so rudely overlooked ? Take 
repentance : the man who can do nothing rightly can 
at least repent of his failures. But for paganism this 
faculty of repentance was a pure supernumerary, a 
straggler too late for the fair. Christianity took it, 
and made it the one power within us which appealed 
straight to the heart of God. And after the night of 
the middle ages had so long branded with obloquy 
even the generous impulses of the flesh, and defined 
the reality to be such that only slavish natures could 
commune with it, in what did the sursum corda of the 
platonizing renaissance lie but in the proclamation 
that the archetype of verity in things laid claim 
on the widest activity of our whole aesthetic being ? 
What were Luther's mission and Wesley's but appeals 
to powers which even the meanest of men might 
carry with them, — faith and self-despair, — but which 
were personal, requiring no priestly intermediation, 
and which brought their owner face to face with 
God ? What caused the wildfire influence of Rous- 
seau but the assurance he gave that man's nature was 
in harmony with the nature of things, if only the 
paralyzing corruptions of custom would stand from 
between? How did Kant and Fichte, Goethe and 
Schiller, inspire their time with cheer, except by say- 
ing, " Use all your powers ; that is the only obedience 
the universe exacts " ? And Carlyle with his gospel 
of work, of fact, of veracity, how does he move us 
except by saying that the universe imposes no tasks 
upon us but such as the most humble can perform ? 
Emerson's creed that everything that ever was or will 
be is here in the enveloping now; that man has but 
to obey himself, — " He who will rest in what he is. 



88 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

is a part of destiny," — is in like manner nothing but 
an exorcism of all scepticism as to the pertinency 
of one's natural faculties. 

In a word, " Son of Man, stand upon thy feet and 
I will speak unto thee ! " is the only revelation of 
truth to which the solving epochs have helped the 
disciple. But that has been enough to satisfy the 
greater part of his rational need. In se and per se 
the universal essence has hardly been more denned 
by any of these formulas than by the agnostic x ; 
but the mere assurance that my powers, such as they 
are, are not irrelevant to it, but pertinent; that it 
speaks to them and will in some way recognize their 
reply ; that I can be a match for it if I will, and not a 
footless waif, — suffices to make it rational to my feel- 
ing in the sense given above. Nothing could be more 
absurd than to hope for the definitive triumph of any 
philosophy which should refuse to legitimate, and to 
legitimate in an emphatic manner, the more powerful 
of our emotional and practical tendencies. Fatalism, 
whose solving word in all crises of behavior is " all 
striving is vain," will never reign supreme, for the 
impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the 
race. Moral creeds which speak to that impulse will 
be widely successful in spite of inconsistency, vague- 
ness, and shadowy determination of expectancy. Man 
needs a rule for his will, and will invent one if one be 
not given him. 

But now observe a most important consequence. 
Men's active impulses are so differently mixed that a 
philosophy fit in this respect for Bismarck will almost 
certainly be unfit for a valetudinarian poet. In other 
words, although one can lay down in advance the 



The Sentiment of Rationality. 89 

rule that a philosophy which utterly denies all funda- 
mental ground for seriousness, for effort, for hope, 
which says the nature of things is radically alien to 
human nature, can never succeed, — one cannot in 
advance say what particular dose of hope, or of gnos- 
ticism of the nature of things, the definitely successful 
philosophy shall contain. In short, it is almost certain 
that personal temperament will here make itselL felt, 
and that although all men will insist on being spoken 
to by the universe in some way, few will insist on being 
spoken to in just the same way. We have here, in 
short, the sphere of what Matthew Arnold likes to 
call Aberglaube, legitimate, inexpugnable, yet doomed 
to eternal variations and disputes. 

Take idealism and materialism as examples of what 
I mean, and suppose for a moment that both give a 
conception of equal theoretic clearness and consist- 
ency, and that both determine our expectations equally 
well. Idealism will be chosen by a man of one emo- 
tional constitution, materialism by another. At this 
very day all sentimental natures, fond of conciliation 
and intimacy, tend to an idealistic faith. Why? Be- 
cause idealism gives to the nature of things such kin- 
ship with our personal selves. Our own thoughts are 
what we are most at home with, what we are least 
afraid of. To say then that the universe essentially is 
thought, is to say that I myself, potentially at least, 
am all. There is no radically alien corner, but an all- 
pervading intimacy. Now, in certain sensitively ego- 
tistic minds this conception of reality is sure to put 
on a narrow, close, sick-room air. Everything senti- 
mental and priggish will be consecrated by it. That 
element in reality which every strong man of com- 
mon-sense willingly feels there because it calls forth 



9<D Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

powers that he owns — the rough, harsh, sea-wave, 
north-wind element, the denier of persons, the democ- 
ratizer — is banished because it jars too much on the 
desire for communion. Now, it is the very enjoyment 
of this element that throws many men upon the mate- 
rialistic or agnostic hypothesis, as a polemic reaction 
against the contrary extreme. They sicken at a life 
wholly constituted of intimacy. There is an over- 
powering desire at moments to escape personality, to 
revel in the action of forces that have no respect for 
our ego, to let the tides flow, even though they flow 
over us. The strife of these two kinds of mental tem- 
per will, I think, always be seen in philosophy. Some 
men will keep insisting on the reason, the atonement, 
that lies in the heart of things, and that we can act 
with; others, on the opacity of brute fact that we 
must react against. 

Now, there is one element of our active nature 
which the Christian religion has emphatically recog- 
nized, but which philosophers as a rule have with 
great insincerity tried to huddle out of sight in their 
pretension to found systems of absolute certainty. I 
mean the element of faith. Faith means belief in 
something concerning which doubt is still theoreti- 
cally possible ; and as the test of belief is willingness 
to act, one may say that faith is the readiness to act 
in a cause the prosperous issue of which is not certified 
to us in advance. It is in fact the same moral quality 
which we call courage in practical affairs ; and there 
will be a very widespread tendency in men of vigor- 
ous nature to enjoy a certain amount of uncertainty 
in their philosophic creed, just as risk lends a zest to 
worldly activity. Absolutely certified philosophies 



The Sentiment of Rationality, 91 

seeking the inconcussum are fruits of mental natures 
in which the passion for identity (which we saw to be 
but one factor of the rational appetite) plays an ab- 
normally exclusive part. In the average man, on the 
:ontrary, the power to trust, to risk a little beyond the 
iteral evidence, is an essential function. Any mode 
)f conceiving the universe which makes an appeal to 
his generous power, and makes the man seem as if 
Le were individually helping to create the actuality 
^i the truth whose metaphysical reality he is willing 
to assume, will be sure to be responded to by large 
numbers. 

The necessity of faith as an ingredient in our men- 
tal attitude is strongly insisted on by the scientific 
philosophers of the present day ; but by a singularly 
arbitrary caprice they say that it is only legitimate 
when used in the interests of one particular propo- 
sition, — the proposition, namely, that the course of 
nature is uniform. That nature will follow to-mor- 
row the same laws that she follows to-day is, they all 
admit, a truth which no man can know ; but in the 
interests of cognition as well as of action we must 
postulate or assume it. As Helmholtz says : " Hier 
gilt nur der eine Rath : vertraue und handle ! " And 
Professor Bain urges : " Our only error is in propos- 
ing to give any reason or justification of the postu- 
late, or to treat it as otherwise than begged at the 
very outset." 

With regard to all other possible truths, however, 
a number of our most influential contemporaries 
think that an attitude of faith is not only illogical but 
shameful. Faith in a religious dogma for which there 
is no outward proof, but which we are tempted to 
postulate for our emotional interests, just as we pos* 



92 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

tulate the uniformity of nature for our intellectual 
interests, is branded by Professor Huxley as " the 
lowest depth of immorality." Citations of this kind 
from leaders of the modern Aufklarung might be 
multiplied almost indefinitely. Take Professor Clif- 
ford's article on the ' Ethics of Belief.' He calls it 
' guilt ' and ' sin ' to believe even the truth without 
' scientific evidence.' But what is the use of being a 
genius, unless with the same scientific evidence as 
other men, one can reach more truth than they? 
Why does Clifford fearlessly proclaim his belief in the 
conscious-automaton theory, although the ' proofs ' be- 
fore him are the same which make Mr. Lewes reject 
it? Why does he believe in primordial units of mind- 
stuff' on evidence which would seem quite worthless 
to Professor Bain? Simply because, like every human 
being of the slightest mental originality, he is pecu- 
liarly sensitive to evidence that bears in some one di- 
rection. It is utterly hopeless to try to exorcise such 
sensitiveness by calling it the disturbing subjective 
factor, and branding it as the root of all evil. * Sub- 
jective ' be it called ! and ' disturbing ' to those whom 
it foils ! But if it helps those who, as Cicero says, 
" vim naturae magis sentiunt," it is good and not evil. 
Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at 
work when we form our philosophical opinions. In- 
tellect, will, taste, and passion co-operate just as they 
do in practical affairs ; and lucky it is if the passion 
be not something as petty as a love of personal con- 
quest over the philosopher across the way. The ab- 
surd abstraction of an intellect verbally formulating 
all its evidence and carefully estimating the probabil- 
ity thereof by a vulgar fraction by the size of whose 
denominator and numerator alone it is swayed, is 



The Sentiment of Rationality. 93 

/'deally as inept as it is actually impossible. It is al- 
most incredible that men who are themselves working 
philosophers should pretend that any philosophy can 
be, or ever has been, constructed without the help of 
personal preference, belief, or divination. How have 
they succeeded in so stultifying their sense for the liv- 
ing facts of human nature as not to perceive that every 
philosopher, or man of science either, whose initiative 
counts for anything in the evolution of thought, has 
taken his stand on a sort of dumb conviction that the 
truth must lie in one direction rather than another, 
and a sort of preliminary assurance that his notion 
can be made to work; and has borne his best fruit 
in trying to make it work? These mental instincts 
in different men are the spontaneous variations upon 
which the intellectual struggle for existence is based. 
The fittest conceptions survive, and with them the 
names of their champions shining to all futurity. 

The coil is about us, struggle as we may. The 
only escape from faith is mental nullity. What we 
enjoy most in a Huxley or a Clifford is not the pro- 
fessor with his learning, but the human personality 
ready to go in for what it feels to be right, in spite of 
all appearances. The concrete man has but one inter- 
est, — to be right. That for him is the art of all arts, 
and all means are fair which help him to it. Naked 
he is flung into the world, and between him and nature 
there are no rules of civilized warfare. The rules of 
the scientific game, burdens of proof, presumptions, 
experimenta cruets, complete inductions, and the like, 
are only binding on those who enter that game. As a 
matter of fact we all more or less do enter it, because 
it helps us to our end. But if the means presume to 
frustrate the end and call us cheats for being right in 



94 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

advance of their slow aid, by guesswork or by hook 
or crook, what shall we say of them? Were all of 
Clifford's works, except the Ethics of Belief, forgot- 
ten, he might well figure in future treatises on psy- 
chology in place of the somewhat threadbare instance 
of the miser who has been led by the association of 
ideas to prefer his gold to all the goods he might buy 
therewith. 

In short, if I am born with such a superior general 
reaction to evidence that I can guess right and act 
accordingly, and gain all that comes of right action, 
while my less gifted neighbor (paralyzed by his scru- 
ples and waiting for more evidence which he dares 
not anticipate, much as he longs to) still stands 
shivering on the brink,- by what law shall I be for- 
bidden to reap the advantages of my superior native 
sensitiveness? Of course I yield to my belief in such 
a case as this or distrust it, alike at my peril, just as 
I do in any of the great practical decisions of life. 
If my inborn faculties are good, I am a prophet; if 
poor, I am a failure : nature spews me out of her 
mouth, and there is an end of me. In the total game 
of life we stake our persons all the while ; and if in its 
theoretic part our persons will help us to a conclu- 
sion, surely we should also stake them there, how- 
ever inarticulate they may be. 1 

1 At most, the command laid upon us by science to believe nothing 
not yet verified by the senses is a prudential rule intended to maxim- 
ize our right thinking and minimize our errors in the long run. In the 
particular instance we must frequently lose truth by obeying it ; but 
on the whole we are safer if we follow it consistently, for we are sure to 
cover our losses with our gains. It is like those gambling and insur- 
ance rules based on probability, in which we secure ourselves against 
losses in detail by hedging on the total run. But this hedging philos- 
ophy requires that long run should be there ; and this makes it inap- 



The Sentiment of Rationality. 95 

But in being myself so very articulate in proving 
what to all readers with a sense for reality will seem 
a platitude, am I not wasting words? We cannot 
live or think at all without some degree of faith. 
Faith is synonymous with working hypothesis. The 
only difference is that while some hypotheses can be 
refuted in five minutes, others may defy ages. A 
chemist who conjectures that a certain wall-paper 
contains arsenic, and has faith enough to lead him 
to take the trouble to put some of it into a hydro- 
gen bottle, finds out by the results of his action 
whether he was right or wrong. But theories like 
that of Darwin, or that of the kinetic constitution of 
matter, may exhaust the labors of generations in their 
corroboration, each tester of their truth proceeding in 
this simple way, — that he acts as if it were true, and 
expects the result to disappoint him if his assumption 
is false. The longer disappointment is delayed, the 
stronger grows his faith in his theory. 

Now, in such questions as God, immortality, abso- 
lute morality, and free-will, no non-papal believer at 
the present day pretends his faith to be of an essen- 
tially different complexion ; he can always doubt his 
creed. But his intimate persuasion is that the odds 
in its favor are strong enough to warrant him in act- 
ing all along on the assumption of its truth. His 
corroboration or repudiation by the nature of things 
may be deferred until the day of judgment. The 

plicable to the question of religious faith as the latter comes home 
to the individual man. He plays the game of life not to escape 
losses, for he brings nothing with him to lose ; he plays it for gains ; 
and it is now or never with him, for the long run which exists in- 
deed for humanity, is not there for him. Let him doubt, believe, 01 
deny, he runs his risk, and has the natural right to choose which 
one it shall be. 



96 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

uttermost he now means is something like this : " I 
expect then to triumph with tenfold glory ; but if it 
should turn out, as indeed it may, that I have spent 
my days in a fool's paradise, why, better have been 
the dupe of such a dreamland than the cunning reader 
of a world like that which then beyond all doubt 
unmasks itself to view." In short, we go in against 
materialism very much as we should go in y had we 
a chance, against the second French empire or the 
Church of Rome, or any other system of things toward 
which our repugnance is vast enough to determine 
energetic action, but too vague to issue in distinct ar- 
gumentation. Our reasons are ludicrously incommen- 
surate with the volume of our feeling, yet on the latter 
we unhesitatingly act. 

Now, I wish to show what to my knowledge has 
never been clearly pointed out, that belief (as meas- 
ured by action) not only does and must continually 
outstrip scientific evidence, but that there is a certain 
class of truths of whose reality belief is a factor as 
well as a confessor ; and that as regards this class of 
truths faith is not only licit and pertinent, but essen- 
tial and indispensable. The truths cannot become 
true till our faith has made them so. 

Suppose, for example, that I am climbing in the 
Alps, and have had the ill-luck to work myself into a 
position from which the only escape is by a terrible 
leap. Being without similar experience, I have no 
evidence of my ability to perform it successfully ; but 
hope and confidence in myself make me sure I shall 
not miss my aim, and nerve my feet to execute what 
without those subjective emotions would perhaps have 
been impossible. But suppose that, on the contrary, 



The Sentiment of Rationality. 97 

the emotions of fear and mistrust preponderate ; or 
suppose that, having just read the Ethics of Belief, 
I feel it would be sinful to act upon an assumption un- 
verified by previous experience, — why, then I shall 
hesitate so long that at last, exhausted and trembling, 
and launching myself in a moment of despair, I miss 
my foothold and roll into the abyss. In this case 
(and it is one of an immense class) the part of wis- 
dom clearly is to believe what one desires ; for the be- 
lief is one of the indispensable preliminary conditions 
of the realization of its object. There are then cases 
where faith creates its own verification. Believe, 
and you shall be right, for you shall save yourself; 
doubt, and you shall again be right, for you shall per- 
ish. The only difference is that to believe is greatly 
to your advantage. 

The future movements of the stars or the facts of 
past history are determined now once for all, whether 
I like them or not. They are given irrespective of 
my wishes, and in all that concerns truths like these 
subjective preference should have no part ; it can only 
obscure the judgment. But in every fact into which 
there enters an element of personal contribution on 
my part, as soon as this personal contribution demands 
a certain degree of subjective energy which, in its turn, 
calls for a certain amount of faith in the result, — so 
that, after all, the future fact is conditioned by my 
present faith in it, — how trebly asinine would it be 
for me to deny myself the use of the subjective method, 
the method of belief based on desire ! 

In every proposition whose bearing is universal 
(and such are all the propositions of philosophy), the 
acts of the subject and their consequences throughout 
eternity should be included in the formula. If M 

7 



98 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

represent the entire world minus the reaction of the 
thinker upon it, and if M + x represent the absolutely 
total matter of philosophic propositions (x standing fof 
the thinker's reaction and its results), — what would be 
a universal truth if the term x were of one complexion, 
might become egregious error if x altered its charac- 
ter. Let it not be said that x is too infinitesimal a 
component to change the character of the immense 
whole in which it lies imbedded. Everything depends 
on the point of view of the philosophic proposition 
in question. If we have to define the universe from 
the point of view of sensibility, the critical material 
for our judgment lies in the animal kingdom, insigni- 
ficant as that is, quantitatively considered. The moral 
definition of the world may depend on phenomena 
more restricted still in range. In short, many a long 
phrase may have its sense reversed by the addition of 
three letters, n-o-t ; many a monstrous mass have its 
unstable equilibrium discharged one way or the other 
by a feather weight that falls. 

Let us make this clear by a few examples. The phi- 
losophy of evolution offers us to-day a new criterion 
to serve as an ethical test between right and wrong. 
Previous criteria, it says, being subjective, have left 
us still floundering in variations of opinion and the 
status belli. Here is a criterion which is objective 
and fixed : That is to be called good which is destined 
to prevail or survive. But we immediately see that this 
standard can only remain objective by leaving myself 
and my conduct out. If what prevails and survives 
does so by my help, and cannot do so without that 
help ; if something else will prevail in case I alter my 
conduct, — how can I possibly now, conscious of alter- 
native courses of action open before me, either of which 



The Sentiment of Rationality. 99 

I may suppose capable of altering the path of events, 
decide which course to take by asking what path 
events will follow? If they follow my direction, evi- 
dently my direction cannot wait on them. The only 
possible manner in which an evolutionist can use his 
standard is the obsequious method of forecasting the 
course society would take but for him, and then put- 
ting an extinguisher on all personal idiosyncrasies of 
desire and interest, and with bated breath and tiptoe 
tread following as straight as may be at the tail, and 
bringing up the rear of everything. Some pious crea- 
tures may find a pleasure in this ; but not only does 
it violate our general wish to lead and not to follow 
(a wish which is surely not immoral if we but lead 
aright), but if it be treated as every ethical principle 
must be treated, — namely, as a rule good for all men 
alike, — its general observance would lead to its prac- 
tical refutation by bringing about a general dead- 
lock. Each good man hanging back and waiting for 
orders from the rest, absolute stagnation would ensue. 
Happy, then, if a few unrighteous ones contribute an 
initiative which sets things moving again ! 

All this is no caricature. That the course of 
destiny may be altered by individuals no wise evolu- 
tionist ought to doubt. Everything for him has 
small beginnings, has a bud which may be ' nipped,' 
and nipped by a feeble force. Human races and 
tendencies follow the law, and have also small begin- 
nings. The best, according to evolution, is that 
which has the biggest endings. Now, if a present 
race of men, enlightened in the evolutionary philoso- 
phy, and able to forecast the future, were able to dis- 
cern in a tribe arising near them the potentiality of 
future supremacy; were able to see that their own 



I oo Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

race would eventually be wiped out of existence by 
the new-comers if the expansion of these were left 
unmolested, — these present sages would have two 
courses open to them, either perfectly in harmony 
with the evolutionary test: Strangle the new race 
now, and ours survives; help the new race, and it 
survives. In both cases the action is right as mea- 
sured by the evolutionary standard, — it is action for 
the winning side. 

Thus the evolutionist foundation of ethics is purely- 
objective only to the herd of nullities whose votes 
count for zero in the march of events. But for others, 
leaders of opinion or potentates, and in general those 
to whose actions position or genius gives a far-reaching 
import, and to the rest of us, each in his measure, — 
whenever we espouse a cause we contribute to the de- 
termination of the evolutionary standard of right. The 
truly wise disciple of this school will then admit faith 
as an ultimate ethical factor. Any philosophy which 
makes such questions as, What is the ideal type of 
humanity? What shall be reckoned virtues? What 
conduct is good? depend on the question, What is 
going to succeed? — must needs fall back on personal 
belief as one of the ultimate conditions of the truth. 
For again and again success depends on energy of 
act ; energy again depends on faith that we shall not 
fail ; and that faith in turn on the faith that we are 
right, — which faith thus verifies itself. 

Take as an example the question of optimism or 
pessimism, which makes so much noise just now in 
Germany. Every human being must sometime de- 
cide for himself whether life is worth living. Sup- 
pose that in looking at the world and seeing how 
full it is of misery, of old age, of wickedness and 



The Sentiment of Rationality. 101 

pain, and how unsafe is his own future, he yields to 
the pessimistic conclusion, cultivates disgust and dread, 
ceases striving, and finally commits suicide. He thus 
adds to the mass M of mundane phenomena, inde- 
pendent of his subjectivity, the subjective comple- 
ment x, which makes of the whole an utterly black 
picture illumined by no gleam of good. Pessimism 
completed, verified by his moral reaction and the deed 
in which this ends, is true beyond a doubt. M + x 
expresses a state of things totally bad. The man's 
belief supplied all that was lacking to make it so, and 
now that it is made so the belief was right. 

But now suppose that with the same evil facts M> 
the man's reaction x is exactly reversed; suppose 
that instead of giving way to the evil he braves it, 
and finds a sterner, more wonderful joy than any pas- 
sive pleasure can yield in triumphing over pain and 
defying fear ; suppose he does this successfully, and 
however thickly evils crowd upon him proves his 
dauntless subjectivity to be more than their match, — 
will not every one confess that the bad character of 
the M is here the conditio sine qua non of the good 
character of the x? Will not every one instantly de- 
clare a world fitted only for fair-weather human beings 
susceptible of every passive enjoyment, but without 
independence, courage, or fortitude, to be from a 
moral point of view incommensurably inferior to a 
world framed to elicit from the man every form of 
triumphant endurance and conquering moral energy? 
As James Hinton says, — 

" Little inconveniences, exertions, pains, — these are the 
only things in which we rightly feel our life at all. If these 
be not there, existence becomes worthless, or worse; sue- 



102 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

cess in putting them all away is fatal. So it is men engage 
in athletic sports, spend their holidays in climbing up moun- 
tains, find nothing so enjoyable as that which taxes their 
endurance and their energy. This is the way we are made, 
I say. It may or may not be a mystery or a paradox ; it is 
a fact. Now, this enjoyment in endurance is just according 
to the intensity of life : the more physical vigor and balance, 
the more endurance can be made an element of satisfaction. 
A sick man cannot stand it. The line of enjoyable suffering 
is not a fixed one ; it fluctuates with the perfectness of the 
life. That our pains are, as they are, unendurable, awful, 
overwhelming, crushing, not to be borne save in misery 
and dumb impatience, which utter exhaustion alone makes 
patient, — that our pains are thus unendurable, means not 
that they are too great, but that we are sick. We have not 
got our proper life. So you perceive pain is no more 
necessarily an evil, but an essential element of the highest 
good." 1 

But the highest good can be achieved only by our 
getting our proper life ; and that can come about 
only by help of a moral energy born of the faith 
that in some way or other we shall succeed in getting 
it if we try pertinaciously enough. This world is 
good, we must say, since it is what we make it, — and 
we shall make it good. How can we exclude from 
the cognition of a truth a faith which is involved in 
the creation of the truth? M has its character inde- 
terminate, susceptible of forming part of a thorough- 
going pessimism on the one hand, or of a meliorism, 
a moral (as distinguished from a sensual) optimism 
on the other. All depends on the character of the 

1 Life of James Hinton, pp. 172, 173. See also the excellent chap- 
ter on Faith and Sight in the Mystery of Matter, by J. Allanson 
Picton. Hinton's Mystery of Pain will undoubtedly always remain 
the classical utterance on this subject. 



The Sentiment of Rationality. 103 

personal contribution x. Wherever the facts to be 
formulated contain such a contribution, we may log- 
ically, legitimately, and inexpugnably believe what 
we desire. The belief creates its verification. The 
thought becomes literally father to the fact, as the 
wish was father to the thought. 1 

Let us now turn to the radical question of life, — 
the question whether this be at bottom a moral or 
an unmoral universe, — and see whether the method 
of faith may legitimately have a place there. It is 
really the question of materialism. Is the world a 
simple brute actuality, an existence de facto about 
which the deepest thing that can be said is that it 
happens so to be; or is the judgment of better or 
worse, of ought, as intimately pertinent to phenom- 
ena as the simple judgment is or is not ? The mate- 
rialistic theorists say that judgments of worth are 
themselves mere matters of fact; that the words 
'good' and ' bad ' have no sense apart from subjective 
passions and interests which we may, if we please, play 
fast and loose with at will, so far as any duty of ours 
to the non-human universe is concerned. Thus, when 
a materialist says it is better for him to suffer great 
inconvenience than to break a promise, he only means 
that his social interests have become so knit up with 

1 Observe that in all this not a word has been said of free-will. It 
all applies as well to a predetermined as to an indeterminate universe. 
If M + x is fixed in advance, the belief which leads to x and the de- 
sire which prompts the belief are also fixed. But fixed or not, these 
subjective states form a phenomenal condition necessarily preceding 
the facts ; necessarily constitutive, therefore, of the truth M -j- x which 
we seek. If, however, free acts be possible, a faith in their possibility, 
by augmenting the moral energy which gives them birth, will increase 
their frequency in a given individual. 



104 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

keeping faith that, those interests once being granted, 
it is better for him to keep the promise in spite of 
everything. But the interests themselves are neither 
right nor wrong, except possibly with reference to 
some ulterior order of interests which themselves 
again are mere subjective data without character, 
either good or bad. 

For the absolute moralists, on the contrary, the in- 
terests are not there merely to be felt, — they are to 
be believed in and obeyed. Not only is it best for 
my social interests to keep my promise, but best for 
me to have those interests, and best for the cosmos to 
have this me. Like the old woman in the story who 
described the world as resting on a rock, and then 
explained that rock to be supported by another rock, 
and finally when pushed with questions said it was 
rocks all the way down, — he who believes this to be 
a radically moral universe must hold the moral order 
to rest either on an absolute and ultimate should, or 
on a series of shoulds all the way down. 1 

The practical difference between this objective sort 
of moralist and the other one is enormous. The sub- 
jectivist in morals, when his moral feelings are at war 
with the facts about him, is always free to seek har- 
mony by toning down the sensitiveness of the feelings. 
Being mere data, neither good nor evil in themselves, 
he may pervert them or lull them to sleep by any 
means at his command. Truckling, compromise, time- 
serving, capitulations of conscience, are conventionally 
opprobrious names for what, if successfully carried out, 

1 In either case, as a later essay explains (see p. 193), the should 
which the moralist regards as binding- upon him must be rooted in the 
feeling of some other thinker, or collection of thinkers, to whose de- 
mands he individually bows. 



The Sentiment of Rationality. 105 

would be on his principles by far the easiest and most 
praiseworthy mode of bringing about that harmony 
between inner and outer relations which is all that he 
means by good. The absolute moralist, on the other 
hand, when his interests clash with the world, is not 
free to gain harmony by sacrificing the ideal inter- 
ests. According to him, these latter should be as 
they are and not otherwise. Resistance then, pov- 
erty, martyrdom if need be, tragedy in a word, — 
such are the solemn feasts of his inward faith. Not 
that the contradiction between the two men occurs 
every day ; in commonplace matters all moral schools 
agree. It is only in the lonely emergencies of life that 
our creed is tested : then routine maxims fail, and we 
fall back on our gods. It cannot then be said that 
the question, Is this a moral world? is a meaning- 
less and unverifiable question because it deals with 
something non-phenomenal. Any question is full of 
meaning to which, as here, contrary answers lead to 
contrary behavior. And it seems as if in answering 
such a question as this we might proceed exactly as 
does the physical philosopher in testing an hypothe- 
sis. He deduces from the hypothesis an experimental 
action, x ; this he adds to the facts M already exist- 
ing. It fits them if the hypothesis be true ; if not, 
there is discord. The results of the action corroborate 
or refute the idea from which it flowed. So here : the 
verification of the theory which you may hold as to 
the objectively moral character of the world can con- 
sist only in this, — that if you proceed to act upon 
your theory it will be reversed by nothing that later 
turns up as your action's fruit ; it will harmonize so 
well with the entire drift of experience that the latter 
will, as it were, adopt it, or at most give it an ampler 



io6 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

interpretation, without obliging you in any way to 
change the essence of its formulation. If this be an 
objectively moral universe, all acts that I make on 
that assumption, all expectations that I ground on it, 
will tend more and more completely to interdigitate 
with the phenomena already existing. M + x will 
be in accord ; and the more I live, and the more the 
fruits of my activity come to light, the more satisfac- 
tory the consensus will grow. While if it be not such 
a moral universe, and I mistakenly assume that it is, 
the course of experience will throw ever new impedi- 
ments in the way of my belief, and become more and 
more difficult to express in its language. Epicycle 
lipon epicycle of subsidiary hypothesis will have to be 
invoked to give to the discrepant terms a temporary 
appearance of squaring with each other; but at last 
even this resource will fail. 

If, on the other hand, I rightly assume the universe 
to be not moral, in what does my verification con- 
sist? It is that by letting moral interests sit lightly, 
by disbelieving that there is any duty about them 
(since duty obtains only as between them and other 
phenomena), and so throwing them over if I find it 
hard to get them satisfied, — it is that by refusing to 
take up a tragic attitude, I deal in the long-run most 
satisfactorily with the facts of life. " All is vanity " 
is here the last word of wisdom. Even though in 
certain limited series there may be a great appear- 
ance of seriousness, he who in the main treats things 
with a degree of good-natured scepticism and radical 
levity will find that the practical fruits of his epicu- 
rean hypothesis verify it more and more, and not 
only save him from pain but do honor to his sa- 
gacity. While, on the other hand, he who contrary 



The Sentiment of Rationality. 107 

to reality stiffens himself in the notion that certain 
things absolutely should be, and rejects the truth that 
at bottom it makes no difference what is, will find 
himself evermore thwarted and perplexed and be- 
muddled by the facts of the world, and his tragic dis- 
appointment will, as experience accumulates, seem to 
drift farther and farther away from that final atone- 
ment or reconciliation which certain partial tragedies 
often get. 

Anaesthesia is the watchword of the moral sceptic 
brought to bay and put to his trumps. Energy is that 
of the moralist. Act on my creed, cries the latter, 
and the results of your action will prove the creed 
true, and that the nature of things is earnest infinitely. 
Act on mine, says the epicurean, and the results will 
prove that seriousness is but a superficial glaze upon 
a world of fundamentally trivial import. You and your 
acts and the nature of things will be alike enveloped 
in a single formula, a universal vanitas vanitatum. 

For the sake of simplicity I have written as if the 
verification might occur in the life of a single philoso- 
pher, — which is manifestly untrue, since the theories 
still face each other, and the facts of the world give 
countenance to both. Rather should we expect, that, 
in a question of this scope, the experience of the en- 
tire human race must make the verification, and that 
all the evidence will not be 'in' till the final integra- 
tion of things, when the last man has had his say and 
contributed his share to the still unfinished x. Then 
the proof will be complete ; then it will appear with- 
out doubt whether the moralistic x has filled up the 
gap which alone kept the M of the world from form- 
ing an even and harmonious unity, or whether the 



lo8 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

non-moralistic x has given the finishing touches which 
were alone needed to make the M appear outwardly 
as vain as it inwardly was. 

But if this be so, is it not clear that the facts M, 
taken per se, are inadequate to justify a conclusion 
either way in advance of my action? My action is 
the complement which, by proving congruous or not, 
reveals the latent nature of the mass to which it is 
applied. The world may in fact be likened unto a 
lock, whose inward nature, moral or unmoral, will 
never reveal itself to our simply expectant gaze. 
The positivists, forbidding us to make any assump- 
tions regarding it, condemn us to eternal ignorance, 
for the ' evidence ' which they wait for can never 
come so long as we are passive. But nature has put 
into our hands two keys, by which we may test the 
lock. If we try the moral key and it fits, it is a moral 
lock. If we try the unmoral key and it fits, it is an 
unmoral lock. I cannot possibly conceive of any 
other sort of ' evidence ' or 'proof than this. It is 
quite true that the co-operation of generations is 
needed to educe it. But in these matters the solidar- 
ity (so called) of the human race is a patent fact. 
The essential thing to notice is that our active pref- 
erence is a legitimate part of the game, — that it is 
our plain business as men to try one of the keys, and 
the one in which we most confide. If then the proof 
exist not till I have acted, and I must needs in acting 
run the risk of being wrong, how can the popular 
science professors be right in objurgating in me 
as infamous a ' credulity ' which the strict logic of 
the situation requires ? If this really be a moral 
universe; if by my acts I be a factor of its destinies; 
if to believe where I may doubt be itself a moral act 



The Sentiment of Rationality. 109 

analogous to voting for a side not yet sure to win, — 
by what right shall they close in upon me and 
steadily negate the deepest conceivable function of 
my being by their preposterous command that I 
shall stir neither hand nor foot, but remain balancing 
myself in eternal and insoluble doubt? Why, doubt 
itself is a decision of the widest practical reach, if 
only because we may miss by doubting what goods 
we might be gaining by espousing the winning side. 
But more than that ! it is often practically impossible 
to distinguish doubt from dogmatic negation. If I 
refuse to stop a murder because I am in doubt 
whether it be not justifiable homicide, I am virtually 
abetting the crime. If I refuse to bale out a boat 
because I am in doubt whether my efforts will keep 
her afloat, I am really helping to sink her. If in the 
mountain precipice I doubt my right to risk a leap, I 
actively connive at my destruction. He who com- 
mands himself not to be credulous of God, of duty, of 
freedom, of immortality, may again and again be 
indistinguishable from him who dogmatically denies 
them. Scepticism in moral matters is an active ally 
of immorality. Who is not for is against. The 
universe will have no neutrals in these questions. 
In theory as in practice, dodge or hedge, or talk as 
we like about a wise scepticism, we are really doing 
volunteer military service for one side or the other. 

Yet obvious as this necessity practically is, thou- 
sands of innocent magazine readers lie paralyzed and 
terrified in the network of shallow negations which 
the leaders of opinion have thrown over their souls. 
All they need to be free and hearty again in the 
exercise of their birthright is that these fastidious 
vetoes should be swept away. All that the human 



no Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

heart wants is its chance. It will willingly forego 
certainty in universal matters if only it can be allowed 
to feel that in them it has that same inalienable right 
to run risks, which no one dreams of refusing to it in 
the pettiest practical affairs. And if I, in these last 
pages, like the mouse in the fable, have gnawed a few 
of the strings of the sophistical net that has been 
binding down its lion-strength, I shall be more than 
rewarded for my pains. 

To sum up : No philosophy will permanently be 
deemed rational by all men which (in addition to 
meeting logical demands) does not to some degree 
pretend to determine expectancy, and in a still 
greater degree make a direct appeal to all those pow- 
ers of our nature which we hold in highest esteem. 
Faith, being one of these powers, will always remain 
a factor not to be banished from philosophic con- 
structions, the more so since in many ways it brings 
forth its own verification. In these points, then, 
it is hopeless to look for literal agreement among 
mankind. 

The ultimate philosophy, we may therefore con- 
clude, must not be too strait-laced in form, must not 
in all its parts divide heresy from orthodoxy by too 
sharp a line. There must be left over and above the 
propositions to be subscribed, ubique, semper, et ab 
omnibus, another realm into which the stifled soul 
may escape from pedantic scruples and indulge its 
own faith at its own risks; and all that can here be 
done will be to mark out distinctly the questions 
which fall within faith's sphere. 



Reflex Action and Theism. ill 



REFLEX ACTION AND THEISM. 1 

Members of the Ministers' Institute: 

LET me confess to the diffidence with which I 
find myself standing here to-day. When the 
invitation of your committee reached me last fall, the 
simple truth is that I accepted it as most men accept 
a challenge, — not because they wish to fight, but 
because they are ashamed to say no. Pretending in 
my small sphere to be a teacher, I felt it would be 
cowardly to shrink from the keenest ordeal to which 
a teacher can be exposed, — the ordeal of teaching 
other teachers. Fortunately, the trial will last but 
one short hour ; and I have the consolation of remem- 
bering Goethe's verses, — 

" Vor den Wissenden sich stellen, 
Sicher ist 's in alien Fallen," — 

for if experts are the hardest people to satisfy, they 
have at any rate the liveliest sense of the difficulties 
of one's task, and they know quickest when one hits 
the mark. 

Since it was as a teacher of physiology that I was 
most unworthily officiating when your committee's invi- 

1 Address delivered to the Unitarian Ministers' Institute at Prince- 
ton, Mass., 1881, and printed in the Unitarian Review for October of 
that year. 



Hi Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

tation reached me, I must suppose it to be for the sake 
of bringing a puff of the latest winds of doctrine which 
blow over that somewhat restless sea that my presence 
is desired. Among all the healthy symptoms that 
characterize this age, I know no sounder one than 
the eagerness which theologians show to assimilate 
results of science, and to hearken to the conclusions 
of men of science about universal matters. One runs 
a better chance of being listened to to-day if one can 
quote Darwin and Helmholtz than if one can only 
quote Schleiermacher or Coleridge. I almost feel 
myself this moment that were I to produce a frog 
and put him through his physiological performances 
in a masterly manner before your eyes, I should gain 
more reverential ears for what I have to say during 
the remainder of the hour. I will not ask whether 
there be not something of mere fashion in this prestige 
which the words of the physiologists enjoy just now. 
If it be a fashion, it is certainly a beneficial one upon 
the whole ; and to challenge it would come with a 
poor grace from one who at the moment he speaks is 
so conspicuously profiting by its favors. 

I will therefore only say this : that the latest breeze 
from the physiological horizon need not necessarily 
be the most important one. Of the immense amount 
of work which the laboratories of Europe and Amer- 
ica, and one may add of Asia and Australia, are 
producing every year, much is destined to speedy 
refutation ; and of more it may be said that its interest 
is purely technical, and not in any degree philosophi- 
cal or universal. 

This being the case, I know you will justify me if I 
fall back on a doctrine which is fundamental and well 
established rather than novel, and ask you whether 



Reflex Action and Theism. 113 

by taking counsel together we may not trace some 
new consequences from it which shall interest us all 
alike as men. I refer to the doctrine of reflex action, 
especially as extended to the brain. This is, of course, 
so familiar to you that I hardly need define it. In a 
general way, all educated people know what reflex 
action means. 

It means that the acts we perform are always the 
result of outward discharges from the nervous centres, 
and that these outward discharges are themselves 
the result of impressions from the external world, car- 
ried in along one or another of our sensory nerves. 
Applied at first to only a portion of our acts, this 
conception has ended by being generalized more 
and more, so that now most physiologists tell us 
that every action whatever, even the most deliber- 
ately weighed and calculated, does, so far as its organic 
conditions go, follow the reflex type. There is not 
one which cannot be remotely, if not immediately, 
traced to an origin in some incoming impression of 
sense. There is no impression of sense which, unless 
inhibited by some other stronger one, does not imme- 
diately or remotely express itself in action of some 
kind. There is no one of those complicated perform- 
ances in the convolutions of the brain to which our 
trains of thought correspond, which is not a mere 
middle term interposed between an incoming sensa- 
tion that arouses it and an outgoing discharge of some 
sort, inhibitory if not exciting, to which itself gives 
rise. The structural unit of the nervous system is in 
fact a triad, neither of whose elements has any inde- 
pendent existence. The sensory impression exists 
only for the sake of awaking the central process of 
reflection, and the central process of reflection exists 

8 



114 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

only for the sake of calling forth the final act. All 
action is thus reaction upon the outer world ; and 
the middle stage of consideration or contemplation 
or thinking is only a place of transit, the bottom of a 
loop, both whose ends have their point of applica- 
tion in the outer world. If it should ever have no 
roots in the outer world, if it should ever happen that 
it led to no active measures, it would fail of its essen- 
tial function, and would have to be considered either 
pathological or abortive. The current of life which 
runs in at our eyes or ears is meant to run out at our 
hands, feet, or lips. The only use of the thoughts it 
occasions while inside is to determine its direction to 
whichever of these organs shall, on the whole, under 
the circumstances actually present, act in the way 
most propitious to our welfare. 

The willing department of our nature, in short, 
dominates both the conceiving department and the 
feeling department; or, in plainer English, percep- 
tion and thinking are only there for behavior's 
sake. 

I am sure I am not wrong in stating this result as 
one of the fundamental conclusions to which the entire 
drift of modern physiological investigation sweeps us. 
If asked what great contribution physiology has made 
to psychology of late years, I am sure every compe- 
tent authority will reply that her influence has in no 
way been so weighty as in the copious illustration, 
verification, and consolidation of this broad, general 
point of view. 

I invite you, then, to consider what may be the pos- 
sible speculative consequences involved in this great 
achievement of our generation. Already, it dom- 
inates all the new work done in psychology; but 



Reflex Action and Theism. 1 1 J 

what I wish to ask is whether its influence may not 
extend far beyond the limits of psychology, even into 
those of theology herself. The relations of the doc- 
trine of reflex action with no less a matter than the 
doctrine of theism is, in fact, the topic to which I 
now invite your attention. 

We are not the first in the field. There have not 
been wanting writers enough to say that reflex action 
and all that follows from it give the coup de grdce to 
the superstition of a God. 

If you open, for instance, such a book on compar- 
ative psychology, as der Thierische Wille of G. H. 
Schneider, you will find, sandwiched in among the 
admirable dealings of the author with his proper sub- 
ject, and popping out upon us in unexpected places, 
the most delightfully naif German onslaughts on the 
degradation of theologians, and the utter incompati- 
bility of so many reflex adaptations to the environ- 
ment with the existence of a creative intelligence. 
There was a time, remembered by many of us here, 
when the existence of reflex action and all the other 
harmonies between the organism and the world were 
held to prove a God. Now, they are held to disprove 
him. The next turn of the whirligig may bring back 
proof of him again. 

Into this debate about his existence, I will not pre- 
tend to enter. I must take up humbler ground, and 
limit my ambition to showing that a God, whether 
existent or not, is at all events the kind of being 
which, if he did exist, would form the most adequate 
possible object for minds framed like our own to con- 
ceive as lying at the root of the universe. My thesis, 
in other words, is this : that some outward reality oi 



Ii6 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

a nature denned as God's nature must be defined, is 
the only ultimate object that is at the same time 
rational and possible for the human mind's contem- 
plation. Anything short of God is not rational \ 
anything more than God is not possible, if the hu- 
man mind be in truth the triadic structure of impres- 
sion, reflection, and reaction which we at the outset 
allowed. 

Theism, whatever its objective warrant, would thus 
be seen to have a subjective anchorage in its con- 
gruity with our nature as thinkers; and, however it 
may fare with its truth, to derive from this subjective 
adequacy the strongest possible guaranty of its per- 
manence. It is and will be the classic mean of rational 
opinion, the centre of gravity of all attempts to solve 
the riddle of life, — some falling below it by defect, 
some flying above it by excess, itself alone satisfying 
every mental need in strictly normal measure. Our 
gain will thus in the first instance be psychological. 
We shall merely have investigated a chapter in the 
natural history of the mind, and found that, as a mat- 
ter of such natural history, God may be called the 
normal object of the mind's belief. Whether over 
and above this he be really the living truth is another 
question. If he is, it will show the structure of our 
mind to be in accordance with the nature of reality. 
Whether it be or not in such accordance is, it seems 
to me, one of those questions that belong to the 
province of personal faith to decide. I will not touch 
upon the question here, for I prefer to keep to the 
strictly natural-history point of view. I will only re- 
mind you that each one of us is entitled either to 
doubt or to believe in the harmony between his facul- 
ties and the truth ; and that, whether he doubt or be- 



Reflex Action and Theism. 117 

lieve, he does it alike on his personal responsibility 
and risk. 

" Du musst glauben, du musst wagen, 
Denn die Gotter leihn kein Pfand, 
Nur ein Wunder kann dich tragen 
In das schone Wunderland." 

I will presently define exactly what I mean by God 
and by Theism, and explain what theories I referred 
to when I spoke just now of attempts to fly beyond 
the one and to outbid the other. 

But, first of all, let me ask you to linger a moment 
longer over what I have called the reflex theory of 
mind, so as to be sure that we understand it abso- 
lutely before going on to consider those of its con- 
sequences of which I am more particularly to speak. 
I am not quite sure that its full scope is grasped even 
by those who have most zealously promulgated it. I 
am not sure, for example, that all physiologists see that 
it commits them to regarding the mind as an essen- 
tially teleological mechanism. I mean by this that the 
conceiving or theorizing faculty — the mind's middle 
department — functions exclusively for the sake of 
ends that do not exist at all in the world of impres- 
sions we receive by way of our senses, but are set by 
our emotional and practical subjectivity altogether. 1 
It is a transformer of the world of our impressions 
into a totally different world, — the world of our con- 
ception; and the transformation is effected in the 
interests of our volitional nature, and for no other 
purpose whatsoever. Destroy the volitional nature, 
the definite subjective purposes, preferences, fond- 

1 See some Remarks on Spencer's Definition of Mind, in the 
Journal of Speculative Philosophy for January, 1878. 



1 1 8 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

nesses for certain effects, forms, orders, and not the 
slightest motive would remain for the brute order of 
our experience to be remodelled at all. But, as we 
have the elaborate volitional constitution we do have, 
the remodelling must be effected ; there is no escape. 
The world's contents are given to each of us in an 
order so foreign to our subjective interests that we 
can hardly by an effort of the imagination picture to 
ourselves what it is like. We have to break that 
order altogether, — and by picking out from it the 
items which concern us, and connecting them with 
others far away, which we say ' belong ' with them, 
we are able to make out definite threads of sequence 
and tendency; to foresee particular liabilities and 
get ready for them ; and to enjoy simplicity and har- 
mony in place of what was chaos. Is not the sum of 
your actual experience taken at this moment and 
impartially added together an utter chaos? The 
strains of my voice, the lights and shades inside the 
room and out, the murmur of the wind, the ticking 
of the clock, the various organic feelings you may 
happen individually to possess, do these make a 
whole at all ? Is it not the only condition of your 
mental sanity in the midst of them that most of them 
should become non-existent for you, and that a few 
others — the sounds, I hope, which I am uttering — 
should evoke from places in your memory that have 
nothing to do with this scene associates fitted to com- 
bine with them in what we call a rational train of 
thought, — rational, because it leads to a conclusion 
which we have some organ to appreciate? We have 
no organ or faculty to appreciate the simply given 
order. The real world as it is given objectively at 
this moment is the sum total of all its beings and 



Reflex Action and Theism. 



119 



events now. But can we think of such a sum? Can 
we realize for an instant what a cross-section of all 
existence at a definite point of time would be? While 
I talk and the flies buzz, a sea-gull catches a fish at 
the mouth of the Amazon, a tree falls in the Adiron- 
dack wilderness, a man sneezes in Germany, a horse 
dies in Tartary, and twins are born in France. What 
does that mean? Does the contemporaneity of these 
events with one another and with a million others as 
disjointed, form a rational bond between them, and 
unite them into anything that means for us a world ? 
Yet just such a collateral contemporaneity, and noth- 
ing else, is the real order of the world. It is an order 
with which we have nothing to do but to get away 
from it as fast as possible. As I said, we break it: 
we break it into histories, and we break it into arts, 
and we break it into sciences; and then we begin to 
feel at home. We make ten thousand separate serial 
orders of it, and on any one of these we react as 
though the others did not exist. We discover among 
its various parts relations that were never given to 
sense at all (mathematical relations, tangents, squares, 
and roots and logarithmic functions), and out of an 
infinite number of these we call certain ones essential 
and lawgiving, and ignore the rest. Essential these 
relations are, but only for our purpose, the other rela- 
tions being just as real and present as they ; and our 
purpose is to conceive simply and to foresee. Are not 
simple conception and prevision subjective ends pure 
and simple? They are the ends of what we call 
science ; and the miracle of miracles, a miracle not 
yet exhaustively cleared up by any philosophy, is 
that the given order lends itself to the remodelling. 
It shows itself plastic to many of our scientific, to 



120 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

many of our aesthetic, to many of our practical pur- 
poses and ends. 

When the man of affairs, the artist, or the man of 
science fails, he is not rebutted. He tries again. He 
says the impressions of sense must give way, must be 
reduced to the desiderated form. 1 They all postulate 
in the interests of their volitional nature a harmony 
between the latter and the nature of things. The 
theologian does no more. And the reflex doctrine 
of the mind's structure, though all theology should 
as yet have failed of its endeavor, could but confess 
that the endeavor itself at least obeyed in form the 
mind's most necessary law. 2 

Now for the question I asked above : What kind 
of a being would God be if he did exist ? The word 
' God ' has come to mean many things in the history 

1 "No amount of failure in the attempt to subject the world of 
sensible experience to a thorough-going system of conceptions, and 
to bring all happenings back to cases of immutably valid law, is 
able to shake our faith in the Tightness of our principles. We hold 
fast to our demand that even the greatest apparent confusion must 
sooner or later solve itself in transparent formulas. We begin the 
work ever afresh ; and, refusing to believe that nature will perma- 
nently withhold the reward of our exertions, think rather that we 
have hitherto only failed to push them in the right direction. And 
all this pertinacity flows from a conviction that we have no right 
to renounce the fulfilment of our task. What, in short sustains 
the courage of investigators is the force of obligation of an ethical 
idea." (Sigwart : Logik, bd. ii., p. 23.) 

This is a true account of the spirit of science. Does it essentially 
differ from the spirit of religion ? And is any one entitled to say in 
advance, that, while the one form of faith shall be crowned with 
success, the other is certainly doomed to fail ? 

2 Concerning the transformation of the given order into the order 
of conception, see S. H. Hodgson, The Philosophy of Reflection, 
chap. v. ; H. Lotze, Logik, sects. 342-351 ; C. Sigwart, Logik, sects. 
60-63, 105. 



Reflex Action and Theism. 121 

of human thought, from Venus and Jupiter to the 
' Idee ' which figures in the pages of Hegel. Even 
the laws of physical nature have, in these positivis- 
tic times, been held worthy of divine honor and pre- 
sented as the only fitting object of our reverence. 1 
Of course, if our discussion is to bear any fruit, we 
must mean something more definite than this. We 
must not call any object of our loyalty a ' God ' with- 
out more ado, simply because to awaken our loyalty 
happens to be one of God's functions. He must have 
some intrinsic characteristics of his own besides; 
and theism must mean the faith of that man who 
believes that the object of his loyalty has those other 
attributes, negative or positive, as the case may be. 

Now, as regards a great many of the attributes 
of God, and their amounts and mutual relations, the 
world has been delivered over to disputes. All 
such may for our present purpose be considered 
as quite inessential. Not only such matters as his 
mode of revealing himself, the precise extent of his 
providence and power and their connection with our 
free-will, the proportion of his mercy to his justice, 
and the amount of his responsibility for evil ; but 
also his metaphysical relation to the phenomenal 
world, whether causal, substantial, ideal, or what not, — 
are affairs of purely sectarian opinion that need not 
concern us at all. Whoso debates them presup- 
poses the essential features of theism to be granted 
already; and it is with these essential features, the 
bare poles of the subject, that our business exclu- 
sively lies. 

1 Haeckel has recently (Der Monismus, 1893, P- 37) proposed the 
Cosmic Ether as a divinity fitted to reconcile science with theistic 
faith. 



122 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

Now, what are these essential features ? First, it 
is essential that God be conceived as the deepest 
power in the universe ; and, second, he must be con- 
ceived under the form of a mental personality. The 
personality need not be determined intrinsically any 
further than is involved in the holding of certain 
things dear, and in the recognition of our dispositions 
toward those things, the things themselves being all 
good and righteous things. But, extrinsically con- 
sidered, so to speak, God's personality is to be re- 
garded, like any other personality, as something lying 
outside of my own and other than me, and whose 
existence I simply come upon and find. A power 
not ourselves, then, which not only makes for right- 
eousness, but means it, and which recognizes us, — 
such is the definition which I think nobody will be 
inclined to dispute. Various are the attempts to 
shadow forth the other lineaments of so supreme a 
personality to our human imagination ; various the 
ways of conceiving in what mode the recognition, 
the hearkening to our cry, can come. Some are gross 
and idolatrous ; some are the most sustained efforts 
man's intellect has ever made to keep still living on 
that subtile edge of things where speech and thought 
expire. But, with all these differences, the essence 
remains unchanged. In whatever other respects the 
divine personality may differ from ours or may re- 
semble it, the two are consanguineous at least in 
this, — that both have purposes for which they care, 
and each can hear the other's call. 

Meanwhile, we can already see one consequence 
and one point of connection with the reflex-action 
theory of mind. Any mind, constructed on the 



Reflex Action and Theism. 123 

triadic-reflex pattern, must first get its impression 
from the object which it confronts ; then define what 
that object is, and decide what active measures its 
presence demands ; and finally react. The stage of 
reaction depends on the stage of definition, and these, 
of course, on the nature of the impressing object. 
When the objects are concrete, particular, and fa- 
miliar, our reactions are firm and certain enough, 
— often instinctive. I see the desk, and lean on it ; 
I see your quiet faces, and I continue to talk. But 
the objects will not stay concrete and particular: 
they fuse themselves into general essences, and they 
sum themselves into a whole, — the universe. And 
then the object that confronts us, that knocks on 
our mental door and asks to be let in, and fixed and 
decided upon and actively met, is just this whole 
universe itself and its essence. 

What are they, and how shall I meet them ? 

The whole flood of faiths and systems here rush in. 
Philosophies and denials of philosophy, religions and 
atheisms, scepticisms and mysticisms, confirmed 
emotional moods and habitual practical biases, jos- 
tle one another; for all are alike trials, hasty, prolix, 
or of seemly length, to answer this momentous ques- 
tion. And the function of them all, long or short, 
that which the moods and the systems alike sub- 
serve and pass into, is the third stage, — the stage 
of action. For no one of them itself is final. They 
form but the middle segment of the mental curve, 
and not its termination. As the last theoretic pulse 
dies away, it does not leave the mental process com- 
plete : it is but the forerunner of the practical mo- 
ment, in which alone the cycle of mentality finds its 
rhythmic pause. 



124 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

We easily delude ourselves about this middle stage. 
Sometimes we think it final, and sometimes we fail to 
see, amid the monstrous diversity in the length and 
complication of the cogitations which may fill it, that 
it can have but one essential function, and that the 
one we have pointed out, — the function of defining 
the direction which our activity, immediate or remote, 
shall take. 

If I simply say, " Vanitas vanitatum, omnia van- 
itas ! " I am defining the total nature of things in a 
way that carries practical consequences with it as 
decidedly as if I write a treatise De Natura Rerum in 
twenty volumes. The treatise may trace its conse- 
quences more minutely than the saying; but the only 
worth of either treatise or saying is that the conse- 
quences are there. The long definition can do no 
more than draw them ; the short definition does no 
less. Indeed, it may be said that if two apparently 
different definitions of the reality before us should 
have identical consequences, those two definitions 
would really be identical definitions, made delusively 
to appear different merely by the different verbiage 
in which they are expressed. 1 

My time is unfortunately too short to stay and give 
to this truth the development it deserves ; but I will 
assume that you grant it without further parley, and 
pass to the next step in my argument. And here, 
too, I shall have to bespeak your close attention for a 
moment, while I pass over the subject far more rap- 

1 Seethe admirably original "Illustrations of the Logic of Sci- 
ence," by C. S. Peirce, especially the second paper, " How to make 
our Thoughts clear," in the Popular Science Monthly for January, 
1878. 



Reflex Action and Theism. 125 

idly than it deserves. Whether true or false, any 
view of the universe which shall completely satisfy 
the mind must obey conditions of the mind's own 
imposing, must at least let the mind be the umpire to 
decide whether it be fit to be called a rational universe 
or not. Not any nature of things which may seem to 
be will also seem to be ipso facto rational; and if it 
do not seem rational, it will afflict the mind with a 
ceaseless uneasiness, till it be formulated or interpreted 
in some other and more congenial way. The study 
of what the mind's criteria of rationality are, the defi- 
nition of its exactions in this respect, form an intensely 
interesting subject into which I cannot enter now 
with any detail. 1 But so much I think you will grant 
me without argument, — that all three departments 
of the mind alike have a vote in the matter, and that 
no conception will pass muster which violates any of 
their essential modes of activity, or which leaves them 
without a chance to work. By what title is it that 
every would-be universal formula, every system of 
philosophy which rears its head, receives the inevit- 
able critical volley from one half of mankind, and falls 
to the rear, to become at the very best the creed of 
some partial sect? Either it has dropped out of its 
net some of our impressions of sense, — what we call 
the facts of nature, — or it has left the theoretic and 
defining department with a lot of inconsistencies and 
unmediated transitions on its hands ; or else, finally, 
it has left some one or more of our fundamental active 
and emotional powers with no object outside of them- 
selves to react-on or to live for. Any one of these 
defects is fatal to its complete success. Some one 

1 On this subject, see the preceding Essay. 



126 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

will be sure to discover the flaw, to scout the system, 
and to seek another in its stead. 

I need not go far to collect examples to illustrate 
to an audience of theologians what I mean. Nor will 
you in particular, as champions of the Unitarianism 
of New England, be slow to furnish, from the motives 
which led to your departure from our orthodox ances- 
tral Calvinism, instances enough under the third or 
practical head. A God who gives so little scope to 
love, a predestination which takes from endeavor all 
its zest with all its fruit, are irrational conceptions, 
because they say to our most cherished powers, There 
is no object for you. 

Well, just as within the limits of theism some kinds 
are surviving others by reason of their greater practi- 
cal rationality, so theism itself, by reason of its prac- 
tical rationality, is certain to survive all lower creeds. 
Materialism and agnosticism, even were they true, 
could never gain universal and popular acceptance ; 
for they both, alike, give a solution of things which is 
irrational to the practical third of our nature, and in 
which we can never volitionally feel at home. Each 
comes out of the second or theoretic stage of mental 
functioning, with its definition of the essential nature 
of things, its formula of formulas prepared. The 
whole array of active forces of our nature stands wait- 
ing, impatient for the word which shall tell them how 
to discharge themselves most deeply and worthily 
upon life. "Well!" cry they, " what shall we do?" 
" Ignoramus, ignorabimus ! " says agnosticism. " Re- 
act upon atoms and their concussions ! " says mate- 
rialism. What a collapse ! The mental train misses 
fire, the middle fails to ignite the end, the cycle breaks 
down half-way to its conclusion; and the active 



Reflex Action and Theism. 127 

powers left alone, with no proper object on which to 
vent their energy, must either atrophy, sicken, and 
die, or else by their pent-up convulsions and excite- 
ment keep the whole machinery in a lever until some 
less incommensurable solution, some more practically 
rational formula, shall provide a normal issue for the 
currents of the soul. 

Now, theism always stands ready with the most 
practically rational solution it is possible to conceive. 
Not an energy of our active nature to which it does 
not authoritatively appeal, not an emotion of which 
it does not normally and naturally release the springs. 
At a single stroke, it changes the dead blank it of the 
world into a living thou, with whom the whole man may 
have dealings. To you, at any rate, I need waste no 
words in trying to prove its supreme commensurate- 
ness with all the demands that department Number 
Three of the mind has the power to impose on depart- 
ment Number Two. 

Our volitional nature must then, until the end of 
time, exert a constant pressure upon the other depart- 
ments of the mind to induce them to function to 
theistic conclusions. No contrary formulas can be 
more than provisionally held. Infra-theistic theories 
must be always in unstable equilibrium ; for depart- 
ment Number Three ever lurks in ambush, ready to 
assert its rights; and on the slightest show of justifi- 
cation it makes its fatal spring, and converts them 
into the other form in which alone mental peace and 
order can permanently reign. 

The question is, then, Can departments One and 
Two, can the facts of nature and the theoretic elabo- 
ration of them, always lead to theistic conclusions? 

The future history of philosophy is the only author* 



128 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

ity capable of answering that question. I, at all 
events, must not enter into it to-day, as that would 
be to abandon the purely natural-history point of 
view I mean to keep. 

This only is certain, that the theoretic faculty lives 
between two fires which never give her rest, and 
make her incessantly revise her formulations. If she 
sink into a premature, short-sighted, and idolatrous 
theism, in comes department Number One with its 
battery of facts of sense, and dislodges her from her 
dogmatic repose. If she lazily subside into equilib- 
rium with the same facts of sense viewed in their sim- 
ple mechanical outwardness, up starts the practical 
reason with its demands, and makes that couch a 
bed of thorns. From generation to generation thus it 
goes, — now a movement of reception from without, 
now one of expansion from within ; department Num- 
ber Two always worked to death, yet never excused 
from taking the most responsible part in the arrange- 
ments. To-day, a crop of new facts ; to-morrow, a 
flowering of new motives, — the theoretic faculty al- 
ways having to effect the transition, and life growing 
withal so complex and subtle and immense that her 
powers of conceiving are almost ruptured with the 
strain. See how, in France, the mummy-cloths of 
the academic and official theistic philosophy are rent 
by the facts of evolution, and how the young thinkers 
are at work ! See, in Great Britain, how the dryness 
of the strict associationist school, which under the 
ministration of Mill, Bain, and Spencer dominated us 
but yesterday, gives way to more generous idealisms, 
born of more urgent emotional needs and wrapping 
the same facts in far more massive intellectual har- 
monies ! These are but tackings to the common 



Reflex Action and Theism. 129 

port, to that ultimate Weltanschauung of maximum 
subjective as well as objective richness, which, what- 
ever its other properties may be, will at any rate wear 
the theistic form. 

Here let me say one word about a remark we often 
hear coming from the anti-theistic wing: It is base, 
it is vile, it is the lowest depth of immorality, to allow 
department Number Three to interpose its demands, 
and have any vote in the question of what is true and 
what is false ; the mind must be a passive, reaction- 
less sheet of white paper, on which reality will simply 
come and register its own philosophic definition, as 
the pen registers the curve on the sheet of a chrono- 
graph. " Of all the cants that are canted in this cant- 
ing age" this has always seemed to me the most 
wretched, especially when it comes from professed 
psychologists. As if the mind could, consistently 
with its definition, be a reactionless sheet at all ! As 
if conception could possibly occur except for a teleo- 
logical purpose, except to show us the way from a 
state of things our senses cognize to another state 
of things our will desires ! As if ' science ' itself 
were anything else than such an end of desire, 
and a most peculiar one at that ! And as if the 
1 truths ' of bare physics in particular, which these 
sticklers for intellectual purity contend to be the only 
uncontaminated form, were not as great an alteration 
and falsification of the simply ' given ' order of the 
world, into an order conceived solely for the mind's 
convenience and delight, as any theistic doctrine pos- 
sibly can be ! 

Physics is but one chapter in the great jugglery 
which our conceiving faculty is forever playing with 

9 



130 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

the order of being as it presents itself to our recep- 
tion. It transforms the unutterable dead level and 
continuum of the ' given ' world into an utterly unlike 
world of sharp differences and hierarchic subordina- 
tions for no other reason than to satisfy certain sub- 
jective passions we possess. 1 

And, so far as we can see, the given world is there 
only for the sake of the operation. At any rate, to 
operate upon it is our only chance of approaching it; 
for never can we get a glimpse of it in the unimagin- 
able insipidity of its virgin estate. To bid the man's 
subjective interests be passive till truth express itself 
from out the environment, is to bid the sculptor's 
chisel be passive till the statue express itself from out 
the stone. Operate we must! and the only choice 
left us is that between operating to poor or to rich 
results. The only possible duty there can be in the 
matter is the duty of getting the richest results that 
the material given will allow. The richness lies, of 
course, in the energy of all three departments of the 
mental cycle. Not a sensible ' fact ' of department 
One must be left in the cold, not a faculty of depart- 
ment Three be paralyzed ; and department Two must 
form an indestructible bridge. It is natural that the 
habitual neglect of department One by theologians 
should arouse indignation; but it is most unnatural 
that the indignation should take the form of a whole- 
sale denunciation of department Three. It is the 
story of Kant's dove over again, denouncing the pres- 

1 " As soon as it is recognized that our thought, as logic deals with 
it, reposes on our will to think, the primacy of the will, even in 
the theoretical sphere, must be conceded ; and the last of presup- 
positions is not merely [Kant's] that ' I think ' must accompany all 
my representations, but also that ' I will ' must dominate all my 
thinking." (Sigwart: Logik, ii. 25.) 



Reflex Action and Theism. 131 

sure of the air. Certain of our positivists keep chim- 
ing to us, that, amid the wreck of every other god 
and idol, one divinity still stands upright, — that his 
name is Scientific Truth, and that he has but one 
commandment, but that one supreme, saying, Thou 
slialt not be a tkeist, for that would be to satisfy thy 
subjective propensities, and the satisfaction of those 
is intellectual damnation. These most conscientious 
gentlemen think they have jumped off their own feet, 
— emancipated their mental operations from the con- 
trol of their subjective propensities at large and in 
toto. But they are deluded. They have simply 
chosen from among the entire set of propensities at 
their command those that were certain to construct, 
out of the materials given, the leanest, lowest, arid- 
est result, — namely, the bare molecular world, — and 
they have sacrificed all the rest. 1 

Man's chief difference from the brutes lies in the 
exuberant excess of his subjective propensities, — 
his pre-eminence over them simply and solely in the 
number and in the fantastic and unnecessary charac- 
ter of his wants, physical, moral, aesthetic, and intel- 
lectual. Had his whole life not been a quest for the 
superfluous, he would never have established himself 
as inexpugnably as he has done in the necessary. 
And from the consciousness of this he should draw 
the lesson that his wants are to be trusted ; that even 

1 As our ancestors said, Fiat justitia, per eat mundus, so we, who do 
not believe in justice or any absolute good, must, according to these 
prophets, be willing to see the world perish, in order that scientia fiat. 
Was there ever a more exquisite idol of the den, or rather of the shop ? 
In the clean sweep to be made of superstitions, let the idol of stern 
obligation to be scientific go with the rest, and people will have a 
fair chance to understand one another. But this blowing of hot and 
of cold makes nothing but confusion. 



132 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

when their gratification seems farthest off, the uneasi- 
ness they occasion is still the best guide of his life, 
and will lead him to issues entirely beyond his pres- 
ent powers of reckoning. Prune down his extrava- 
gance, sober him, and you undo him. The appetite 
for immediate consistency at any cost, or what the 
logicians call the ' law of parsimony,' — which is no- 
thing but the passion for conceiving the universe 
in the most labor-saving way, — will, if made the ex- 
clusive law of the mind, end by blighting the devel- 
opment of the intellect itself quite as much as that 
of the feelings or the will. The scientific conception 
of the world as an army of molecules gratifies this 
appetite after its fashion most exquisitely. But if the 
religion of exclusive scientificism should ever succeed 
in suffocating all other appetites out of a nation's 
mind, and imbuing a whole race with the persuasion 
that simplicity and consistency demand a tabula rasa 
to be made of every notion that does not form part 
of the soi-disant scientific synthesis, that nation, that 
race, will just as surely go to ruin, and fall a prey to 
their more richly constituted neighbors, as the beasts 
of the field, as a whole, have fallen a prey to man. 

I have myself little fear for our Anglo-Saxon race. 
Its moral, aesthetic, and practical wants form too 
dense a stubble to be mown by any scientific Occam's 
razor that has yet been forged. The knights of the 
razor will never form among us more than a sect; 
but when I see their fraternity increasing in numbers, 
and, what is worse, when I see their negations acquir- 
ing almost as much prestige and authority as their 
affirmations legitimately claim over the minds of the 
docile public, I feel as if the influences working in 
the direction of our mental barbarization were be- 



Reflex Action and Theism. 133 

ginning to be rather strong, and needed some posi- 
tive counteraction. And when I ask myself from 
what quarter the invasion may best be checked, I 
can find no answer as good as the one suggested by 
casting my eyes around this room. For this needful 
task, no fitter body of men than the Unitarian clergy 
exists. Who can uphold the rights of department 
Three of the mind with better grace than those who 
long since showed how they could fight and suffer for 
department One ? As, then, you burst the bonds of 
a narrow ecclesiastical tradition, by insisting that no 
fact of sense or result of science must be left out of 
account in the religious synthesis, so may you still be 
the champions of mental completeness and all-sided- 
ness. May you, with equal success, avert the forma- 
tion of a narrow scientific tradition, and burst the 
bonds of any synthesis which would pretend to leave 
out of account those forms of being, those relations 
of reality, to which at present our active and emo- 
tional tendencies are our only avenues of approach. 
I hear it said that Unitarianism is not growing in 
these days. I know nothing of the truth of the state- 
ment ; but if it be true, it is surely because the great 
ship of Orthodoxy is nearing the port and the pilot 
is being taken on board. If you will only lead 
in a theistic science, as successfully as you have led 
in a scientific theology, your separate name as Uni- 
tarians may perish from the mouths of men ; for your 
task will have been done, and your function at an end. 
Until that distant day, you have work enough in both 
directions awaiting you. 

Meanwhile, let me pass to the next division of our 
subject. I said that we are forced to regard God as 



134 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

the normal object of the mind's belief, inasmuch as 
any conception that falls short of God is irrational, 
if the word ' rational ' be taken in its fullest sense ; 
while any conception that goes beyond God is im- 
possible, if the human mind be constructed after the 
triadic-reflex pattern we have discussed at such 
length. The first half of the thesis has been disposed 
of. Infra-theistic conceptions, materialisms and ag- 
nosticisms, are irrational because they are inade- 
quate stimuli to man's practical nature. I have now 
to justify the latter half of the thesis. 

I dare say it may for an instant have perplexed 
some of you that I should speak of conceptions that 
aimed at going beyond God, and of attempts to fly 
above him or outbid him; so I will now explain 
exactly what I mean. In defining the essential at- 
tributes of God, I said he was a personality lying 
outside our own and other than us, — a power not 
ourselves. Now, the attempts to fly beyond theism, 
of which I speak, are attempts to get over this ulti- 
mate duality of God and his believer, and to trans- 
form it into some sort or other of identity. If infra- 
theistic ways of looking on the world leave it in the 
third person, a mere it; and if theism turns the it 
into a thou, — so we may say that these other theories 
try to cover it with the mantle of the first person, and 
to make it a part of me. 

I am well aware that I begin here to tread on 
ground in which trenchant distinctions may easily 
seem to mutilate the facts. 

That sense of emotional reconciliation with God 
which characterizes the highest moments of the 
theistic consciousness may be described as ' oneness ' 
with him, and so from the very bosom of theism a 



Reflex Action and Theism. 135 

monistic doctrine seem to arise. But this conscious- 
ness of self-surrender, of absolute practical union 
between one's self and the divine object of one's con- 
templation, is a totally different thing from any sort 
of substantial identity. Still the object God and the 
subject I are two. Still I simply come upon him, and 
find his existence given to me ; and the climax of my 
practical union with what is given, forms at the same 
time the climax of my perception that as a numerical 
fact of existence I am something radically other than 
the Divinity with whose effulgence I am filled. 

Now, it seems to me that the only sort of union of 
creature with creator with which theism, properly so 
called, comports, is of this emotional and practical 
kind ; and it is based unchangeably on the empirical 
fact that the thinking subject and the object thought 
are numerically two. How my mind and will, which 
are not God, can yet cognize and leap to meet him, 
how I ever came to be so separate from him, and how 
God himself came to be at all, are problems that for 
the theist can remain unsolved and insoluble forever. 
It is sufficient for him to know that he himself simply 
is, and needs God ; and that behind this universe God 
simply is and will be forever, and will in some way 
hear his call. In the practical assurance of these 
empirical facts, without ' Erkentnisstheorie ' or philo- 
sophical ontology, without metaphysics of emanation 
or creation to justify or make them more intelligible, 
in the blessedness of their mere acknowledgment as 
given, lie all the peace and power he craves. The 
floodgates of the religious life are opened, and the full 
currents can pour through. 

It is this empirical and practical side of the theistic 
position, its theoretic chastity and modesty, which I 



136 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

wish to accentuate here. The highest flights of the- 
istic mysticism, far from pretending to penetrate the 
secrets of the me and the thou in worship, and to 
transcend the dualism by an act of intelligence, sim- 
ply turn their backs on such attempts. The problem 
for them has simply vanished, — vanished from the 
sight of an attitude which refuses to notice such futile 
theoretic difficulties. Get but that " peace of God 
which passeth understanding," and the questions of 
the understanding will cease from puzzling and pedan- 
tic scruples be at rest. In other words, theistic mys- 
ticism, that form of theism which at first sight seems 
most to have transcended the fundamental otherness 
of God from man, has done it least of all in the theo- 
retic way. The pattern of its procedure is precisely 
that of the simplest man dealing with the simplest 
fact of his environment. Both he and the theist tarry 
in department Two of their minds only so long as is 
necessary to define what is the presence that con- 
fronts them. The theist decides that its character is 
such as to be fitly responded to on his part by a 
religious reaction ; and into that reaction he forth- 
with pours his soul. His insight into the what of life 
leads to results so immediately and intimately rational 
that the why, the how, and the whence of it are ques- 
tions that lose all urgency. ' GefiAhl ist Alles,' Faust 
says. The channels of department Three have drained 
those of department Two of their contents ; and hap- 
piness over the fact that being has made itself what 
it is, evacuates all speculation as to how it could make 
itself at all. 

But now, although to most human minds such a 
position as this will be the position of rational equi- 
librium, it is not difficult to bring forward certain 



Reflex Action and Theism. 137 

considerations, in the light of which so simple and 
practical a mental movement begins to seem rather 
short-winded and second-rate and devoid of intellec- 
tual style. This easy acceptance of an opaque limit 
to our speculative insight ; this satisfaction with a Be- 
ing whose character we simply apprehend without 
comprehending anything more about him, and with 
whom after a certain point our dealings can be only 
of a volitional and emotional sort ; above all, this sit- 
ting down contented with a blank unmediated dualism, 
— are they not the very picture of unfaithfulness to 
the rights and duties of our theoretic reason? 

Surely, if the universe is reasonable (and we must 
believe that it is so), it must be susceptible, poten- 
tially at least, of being reasoned out to the last drop 
without residuum. Is it not rather an insult to the 
very word ' rational ' to say that the rational character 
of the universe and its creator means no more than 
that we practically feel at home in their presence, and 
that our powers are a match for their demands? Do 
they not in fact demand to be understood by us still 
more than to be reacted on? Is not the unparalleled 
development of department Two of the mind in man 
his crowning glory and his very essence ; and may 
not the knowing of the truth be his absolute vocation? 
And if it is, ought he flatly to acquiesce in a spiritual 
life of ' reflex type,' whose form is no higher than 
that of the life that animates his spinal cord, — nay, 
indeed, that animates the writhing segments of any 
mutilated worm? 

It is easy to see how such arguments and queries 
may result in the erection of an ideal of our mental 
destiny, far different from the simple and practical 
religious one we have described. We may well begin 



138 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

to ask whether such things as practical reactions can 
be the final upshot and purpose of all our cogni- 
tive energy. Mere outward acts, changes in the posi- 
tion of parts of matter (for they are nothing else), 
can they possibly be the culmination and consumma- 
tion of our relations with the nature of things? Can 
they possibly form a result to which our godlike 
powers of insight shall be judged merely subservient? 
Such an idea, if we scan it closely, soon begins to 
seem rather absurd. Whence this piece of matter 
comes and whither that one goes, what difference 
ought that to make to the nature of things, except 
so far as with the comings and the goings our won- 
derful inward conscious harvest may be reaped? 

And so, very naturally and gradually, one may be 
led from the theistic and practical point of view to 
what I shall call the gnostical one. We may think 
that department Three of the mind, with its doings of 
right and its doings of wrong, must be there only to 
serve department Two ; and we may suspect that the 
sphere of our activity exists for no other purpose than 
to illumine our cognitive consciousness by the expe- 
rience of its results. Are not all sense and all emo- 
tion at bottom but turbid and perplexed modes of what 
in its clarified shape is intelligent cognition? Is not 
all experience just the eating of the fruit of the tree 
of knowledge of good and evil, and nothing more ? 

These questions fan the fire of an unassuageable 
gnostic thirst, which is as far removed from theism in 
one direction as agnosticism was removed from it in 
the other ; and which aspires to nothing less than an 
absolute unity of knowledge with its object, and refuses 
to be satisfied short of a fusion and solution and satu- 
ration of both impression and action with reason, and 



Reflex Action and Theism. 139 

an absorption of all three departments of the mind 
into one. Time would fail us to-day (even had I the 
learning, which I have not) to speak of gnostic sys- 
tems in detail. The aim of all of them is to shadow 
forth a sort of process by which spirit, emerging from 
its beginnings and exhausting the whole circle of finite 
experience in its sweep, shall at last return and pos- 
sess itself as its own object at the climax of its career. 
This climax is the religious consciousness. At the 
giddy height of this conception, whose latest and 
best known form is the Hegelian philosophy, definite 
words fail to serve their purpose ; and the ultimate 
goal, — where object and subject, worshipped and wor- 
shipper, facts and the knowledge of them, fall into 
one, and where no other is left outstanding beyond this 
one that alone is, and that we may call indifferently 
act or fact, reality or idea, God or creation, — this 
goal, I say, has to be adumbrated to our halting and 
gasping intelligence by coarse physical metaphors, 
' positings ' and ' self-returnings ' and ' removals ' and 
* settings free,' which hardly help to make the matter 
clear. 

But from the midst of the curdling and the circling 
of it all we seem dimly to catch a glimpse of a state 
in which the reality to be known and the power of 
knowing shall have become so mutually adequate 
that each exhaustively is absorbed by the other and 
the twain become one flesh,., and in which the light 
shall somehow have soaked up all the outer darkness 
into its own ubiquitous beams. Like all headlong 
ideals, this apotheosis of the bare conceiving faculty 
has its depth and wildness, its pang and its charm. 
To many it sings a truly siren strain; and so long 
as it is held only as a postulate, as a mere vanishing 



140 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

point to give perspective to our intellectual aim, it is 
hard to see any empirical title by which we may- 
deny the legitimacy of gnosticism's claims. That we 
are not as yet near the goal it prefigures can never be 
a reason why we might not continue indefinitely to 
approach it; and to all sceptical arguments, drawn 
from our reason's actual finiteness, gnosticism can 
still oppose its indomitable faith in the infinite char- 
acter of its potential destiny. 

Now, here it is that the physiologist's generaliza- 
tion, as it seems to me, may fairly come in, and by 
ruling any such extravagant faith out of court help to 
legitimate our personal mistrust of its pretensions. 
I confess that I myself have always had a great mis- 
trust of the pretensions of the gnostic faith. Not 
only do I utterly fail to understand what a cognitive 
faculty erected into the absolute of being, with itself 
as its object, can mean; but even if we grant it a 
being other than itself for object, I cannot reason my- 
self out of the belief that however familiar and at 
home we might become with the character of that 
being, the bare being of it, the fact that it is there at 
all, must always be something blankly given and pre- 
supposed in order that conception may begin its 
work ; must in short lie beyond speculation, and not 
be enveloped in its sphere. 

Accordingly, it is with no small pleasure that as a 
student of physiology and psychology I find the only 
lesson I can learn from these sciences to be one that 
corroborates these convictions. From its first dawn 
to its highest actual attainment, we find that the cog- 
nitive faculty, where it appears to exist at all, appears 
but as one element in an organic mental whole, and 
as a minister to higher mental powers, — the powers 



Reflex Action and Theism. 141 

of will. Such a thing as its emancipation and abso- 
lution from these organic relations receives no faint- 
est color of plausibility from any fact we can discern. 
Arising as a part, in a mental and objective world 
which are both larger than itself, it must, whatever its 
powers of growth maybe (and I am far from wishing 
to disparage them), remain a part to the end. This 
is the character of the cognitive element in all the 
mental life we know, and we have no reason to sup- 
pose that that character will ever change. On the 
contrary, it is more than probable that to the end of 
time our power of moral and volitional response to 
the nature of things will be the deepest organ of com- 
munication therewith we shall ever possess. In every 
being that is real there is something external to, and 
sacred from, the grasp of every other. God's being 
is sacred from ours. To co-operate with his creation 
by the best and rightest response seems all he wants 
of us. In such co-operation with his purposes, not in 
any chimerical speculative conquest of him, not in 
any theoretic drinking of him up, must lie the real 
meaning of our destiny. 

This is nothing new. All men know it at those rare 
moments when the soul sobers herself, and leaves off 
her chattering and protesting and insisting about this 
formula or that. In the silence of our theories we 
then seem to listen, and to hear something like the 
pulse of Being beat; and it is borne in upon us that 
the mere turning of the character, the dumb willing- 
ness to suffer and to serve this universe, is more than 
all theories about it put together. The most any 
theory about it can do is to bring us to that. Cer- 
tain it is that the acutest theories, the greatest intel- 
lectual power, the most elaborate education, are a 



142 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

sheer mockery when, as too often happens, they feed 
mean motives and a nerveless will. And it is equally 
certain that a resolute moral energy, no matter how 
inarticulate or unequipped with learning its owner 
may be, extorts from us a respect we should never pay 
were we not satisfied that the essential root of human 
personality lay there. 

I have sketched my subject in the briefest outlines ; 
but still I hope you will agree that I have established 
my point, and that the physiological view of mental- 
ity, so far from invalidating, can but give aid and com- 
fort to the theistic attitude of mind. Between agnos- 
ticism and gnosticism, theism stands midway, and 
holds to what is true in each. With agnosticism, it 
goes so far as to confess that we cannot know how 
Being made itself or us. With gnosticism, it goes 
so far as to insist that we can know Being's character 
when made, and how it asks us to behave. 

If any one fear that in insisting so strongly that be- 
havior is the aim and end of every sound philosophy 
I have curtailed the dignity and scope of the specula- 
tive function in us, I can only reply that in this ascer- 
tainment of the character of Being lies an almost infi- 
nite speculative task. Let the voluminous considera- 
tions by which all modern thought converges toward 
idealistic or pan-psychic conclusions speak for me. 
Let the pages of a Hodgson, of a Lotze, of a Re- 
nouvier, reply whether within the limits drawn by 
purely empirical theism the speculative faculty finds 
not, and shall not always find, enough to do. But do 
it little or much, its place in a philosophy is always 
the same, and is set by the structural form of the 
mind. Philosophies, whether expressed in sonnets or 



Reflex Action and Theism. 143 

systems, all must wear this form. The thinker starts 
from some experience of the practical world, and asks 
its meaning. He launches himself upon the specula- 
tive sea, and makes a voyage long or short. He as- 
cends into the empyrean, and communes with the 
eternal essences. But whatever his achievements and 
discoveries be while gone, the utmost result they can 
issue in is some new practical maxim or resolve, or 
the denial of some old one, with which inevitably he 
is sooner or later washed ashore on the terra firma of 
concrete life again. 

Whatever thought takes this voyage is a philosophy. 
We have seen how theism takes it. And in the phi- 
losophy of a thinker who, though long neglected, is 
doing much to renovate the spiritual life of his native 
France to-day (I mean Charles Renouvier, whose 
writings ought to be better known among us than they 
are), we have an instructive example of the way in 
which this very empirical element in theism, its con- 
fession of an ultimate opacity in things, of a dimen- 
sion of being which escapes our theoretic control, may 
suggest a most definite practical conclusion, — this 
one, namely, that ' our wills are free.' I will say noth- 
ing of Renouvier's line of reasoning ; it is contained 
in many volumes which I earnestly recommend to your 
attention. 1 But to enforce my doctrine that the num- 
ber of volumes is not what makes the philosophy, let 
me conclude by recalling to you the little poem of 
Tennyson, published last year, in which the specula- 
tive voyage is made, and the same conclusion reached 
in a few lines : — 

1 Especially the Essais de Critique Generale, 2me Edition, 6 vols., 
i2mo, Paris, 1875 > an d the Esquisse d'une Classification Systematique 
des Doctrines Philosophiques, 2 vols., 8vo, Paris, 1885. 



144 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

** Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep, 
From that great deep before our world begins, 
Whereon the Spirit of God moves as he will, — 
Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep, 
From that true world within the world we see, 
Whereof our world is but the bounding shore, — 
Out of the deep, Spirit, out of the deep, 
With this ninth moon that sends the hidden sun 
Down yon dark sea, thou comest, darling boy. 
For in the world which is not ours, they said, 
' Let us make man,' and that which should be man, 
From that one light no man can look upon, 
Drew to this shore lit by the suns and moons 
And all the shadows. O dear Spirit, half-lost 
In thine own shadow and this fleshly sign 
That thou art thou, — who wailest being born 
And banish'd into mystery, . . . 

. . . our mortal veil 
And shattered phantom of that Infinite One, 
Who made thee unconceivably thyself 
Out of his whole world-self and all in all, — 
Live thou, and of the grain and husk, the grape 
And ivyberry, choose ; and still depart 
From death to death through life and life, and find 
Nearer and ever nearer Him who wrought 
Not matter, nor the finite-infinite, 
But this main miracle, that thou art thou, 
With power on thine own act and on the world! 9 



The Dilemma of Determinism. 145 



THE DILEMMA OF DETERMINISM. 1 

A COMMON opinion prevails that the juice has 
ages ago been pressed out of the free-will con- 
troversy, and that no new champion can do more than 
warm up stale arguments which every one has heard. 
This is a radical mistake. I know of no subject less 
worn out, or in which inventive genius has a better 
chance of breaking open new ground, — not, perhaps, 
of forcing a conclusion or of coercing assent, but of 
deepening our sense of what the issue between the 
two parties really is, of what the ideas of fate and of 
free-will imply. At our very side almost, in the past 
few years, we have seen falling in rapid succession 
from the press. works that present the alternative in 
entirely novel lights. Not to speak of the English 
disciples of Hegel, such as Green and Bradley; not 
to speak of Hinton and Hodgson, nor of Hazard here, 
— we see in the writings of Renouvier, Fouillee, and 
Delbceuf 2 how completely changed and refreshed is 
the form of all the old disputes. I cannot pretend to 
vie in originality with any of the masters I have named, 
and my ambition limits itself to just one little point. If 
I can make two of the necessarily implied corollaries 

1 An Address to the Harvard Divinity Students, published in the 
Unitarian Review for September, 1884. 

2 And I may now say Charles S. Peirce, — see the Monist, for 
1892-93. 



146 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

of determinism clearer to you than they have been 
made before, I shall have made it possible for you to 
decide for or against that doctrine with a better under- 
standing of what you are about. And if you prefer 
not to decide at all, but to remain doubters, you will 
at least see more plainly what the subject of your 
hesitation is. I thus disclaim openly on the threshold 
all pretension to prove to you that the freedom of the 
will is true. The most I hope is to induce some of 
you to follow my own example in assuming it true, 
and acting as if it were true. If it be true, it seems to 
me that this is involved in the strict logic of the case. 
Its truth ought not to be forced willy-nilly down our 
indifferent throats. It ought to be freely espoused by 
men who can equally well turn their backs upon it. 
In other words, our first act of freedom, if we are free, 
ought in all inward propriety to be to affirm that we 
are free. This should exclude, it seems to me, from 
the free-will side of the question all hope of a coercive 
demonstration, — a demonstration which I, for one, 
am perfectly contented to go without. 

With thus much understood at the outset, we can 
advance. But not without one more point under- 
stood as well. The arguments I am about to urge 
all proceed on two suppositions : first, when we make 
theories about the world and discuss them with one 
another, we do so in order to attain a conception of 
things which shall give us subjective satisfaction ; and, 
second, if there be two conceptions, and the one 
seems to us, on the whole, more rational than the 
other, we are entitled to suppose that the more ra- 
tional one is the truer of the two. I hope that you 
are all willing to make these suppositions with me; 



The Dilemma of Determinism. 147 

for I am afraid that if there be any of you here who 
are not, they will find little edification in the rest of 
what I have to say. I cannot stop to argue the 
point; but I myself believe that all the magnificent 
achievements of mathematical and physical science — 
our doctrines of evolution, of uniformity of law, and 
the rest — proceed from our indomitable desire to cast 
the world into a more rational shape in our minds 
than the shape into which it is thrown there by the 
crude order of our experience. The world has shown 
itself, to a great extent, plastic to this demand of ours 
for rationality. How much farther it will show itself 
plastic no one can say. Our only means of finding out 
is to try ; and I, for one, feel as free to try conceptions 
of moral as of mechanical or of logical rationality. 
If a certain formula for expressing the nature of the 
world violates my moral demand, I shall feel as free 
to throw it overboard, or at least to doubt it, as if it 
disappointed my demand for uniformity of sequence, 
for example ; the one demand being, so far as I can 
see, quite as subjective and emotional as the other is. 
The principle of causality, for example, — what is it 
but a postulate, an empty name covering simply a 
demand that the sequence of events shall some day 
manifest a deeper kind of belonging of one thing with 
another than the mere arbitrary juxtaposition which 
now phenomenally appears? It is as much an altar 
to an unknown god as the one that Saint Paul found 
at Athens. All our scientific and philosophic ideals 
are altars to unknown gods. Uniformity is as much 
so as is free-will. If this be admitted, we can debate 
on even terms. But if any one pretends that while 
freedom and variety are, in the first instance, subjec- 
tive demands, necessity and uniformity are something 



V 



148 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

altogether different, I do not see how we can debate 
at all. 1 

To begin, then, I must suppose you acquainted 
with all the usual arguments on the subject. I can- 
not stop to take up the old proofs from causation, 
from statistics, from the certainty with which we 
can foretell one another's conduct, from the fixity of 
character, and all the rest. But there are two words 
which usually encumber these classical arguments, 



1 "The whole history of popular beliefs about Nature refutes the 
notion that the thought of a universal physical order can possibly 
have arisen from the purely passive reception and association of par- 
ticular perceptions. Indubitable as it is that men infer from known 
cases to unknown, it is equally certain that this procedure, if restricted 
to the phenomenal materials that spontaneously offer themselves, 
would never have led to the belief in a general uniformity, but only 
to the belief that law and lawlessness rule the world in motley alter- 
nation. From the point of view of strict experience, nothing exists 
but the sum of particular perceptions, with their coincidences on the 
one hand, their contradictions on the other. 

" That there is more order in the world than appears at first sight 
is not discovered till the order is looked for. The first impulse to look 
for it proceeds from practical needs : where ends must be attained, 
we must know trustworthy means which infallibly possess a property, 
or produce a result. But the practical need is only the first occasion 
for our reflection on the conditions of true knowledge ; and even were 
there no such need, motives would still be present for carrying us be- 
yond the stage of mere association. For not with an equal interest, 
or rather with an equal lack of interest, does man contemplate those 
natural processes in which a thing is linked with its former mate, 
and those in which it is linked to something else. The former processes 
harmonize with the conditions of his own thinking: the latter do not. 
In the former, his concepts, general judg?nents, and inferences apply to 
reality : in the latter, they have no such application. And thus the 
intellectual satisfaction which at first comes to him without reflection, 
at last excites in him the conscious wish to find realized throughout 
the entire phenomenal world those rational continuities, uniformities, 
and necessities which are the fundamental element and guiding prin- 
ciple of his own thought." (Sigwart, Logik, bd. 2, s. 382.) 



The Dilemma of Determinism. 149 

and which we must immediately dispose of if we 
are to make any progress. One is the eulogistic 
word freedom, and the other is the opprobrious word 
chance. The word ' chance ' I wish to keep, but I 
wish to get rid of the word ' freedom.' Its eulogistic 
associations have so far overshadowed all the rest of 
its meaning that both parties claim the sole right to 
use it, and determinists to-day insist that they alone 
are freedom's champions. Old-fashioned determin- 
ism was what we may call hard determinism. . It did 
not shrink from such words as fatality, bondage of 
the will, necessitation, and the like. Nowadays, we 
have a soft determinism which abhors harsh words, 
and, repudiating fatality, necessity, and even prede- 
termination, says that its real name is freedom ; for 
freedom is only necessity understood, and bondage 
to the highest is identical with true freedom. Even 
a writer as little used to making capital out of soft 
words as Mr. Hodgson hesitates not to call himself a 
* free-will determinist.' 

Now, all this is a quagmire of evasion under which 
the real issue of fact has been entirely smothered. 
Freedom in all these senses presents simply no prob- 
lem at all. No matter what the soft determinist mean 
by it, — whether he mean the acting without external 
constraint; whether he mean the acting rightly, or 
whether he mean the acquiescing in the law of the 
whole, — who cannot answer him that sometimes we 
are free and sometimes we are not? But there is a 
problem, an issue of fact and not of words, an issue 
of the most momentous importance, which is often 
decided without discussion in one sentence, — nay, 
in one clause of a sentence, — by those very writers 
rvho spin out whole chapters in their efforts to show 



150 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

what * true ' freedom is ; and that is the question of 
determinism, about which we are to talk to-night. 

Fortunately, no ambiguities hang about this word 
or about its opposite, indeterminism. Both desig- 
nate an outward way in which things may happen, and 
their cold and mathematical sound has no sentimental 
associations that can bribe our partiality either way in 
advance. Now, evidence of an external kind to de- 
cide between determinism and indeterminism is, as 
I intimated a while back, strictly impossible to find. 
Let us look at the difference between them and see 
for ourselves. What does determinism profess? 

It professes that those parts of the universe already 
laid down absolutely appoint and decree what the 
other parts shall be. The future has no ambiguous 
possibilities hidden in its womb : the part we call the 
present is compatible with only one totality. Any 
other future complement than the one fixed from 
eternity is impossible. The whole is in each and 
every part, and welds it with the rest into an abso- 
lute unity, an iron block, in which there can be no 
equivocation or shadow of turning. 

" With earth's first clay they did the last man knead, 
And there of the last harvest sowed the seed. 
And the first morning of creation wrote 
What the last dawn of reckoning shall read." 

Indeterminism, on the contrary, says that the parts 
have a certain amount of loose play on one another, so 
that the laying down of one of them does not neces- 
sarily determine what the others shall be. It admits 
that possibilities may be in excess of actualities, and 
that things not yet revealed to our knowledge may 
really in themselves be ambiguous. Of two alter- 



The Dilemma of Determinism^ j^ 

native futures which we conceive, both nia stc ac c ] eter< 
really possible; and the one become LnpO;>sible some 
at the very moment when the other excludes . 
becoming real itself. Indeterminism thus denies me 
world to be one unbending unit of fact. It says there 
is a certain ultimate pluralism in it; and, so saying, 
it corroborates our ordinary unsophisticated view of 
things. To that view, actualities seem to float in a 
wider sea of possibilities from out of which they are 
chosen ; and, somewhere, indeterminism says, such 
possibilities exist, and form a part of truth. 

Determinism, on the contrary, says they exist no- 
where, and that necessity on the one hand and im- 
possibility on the other are the sole categories of the 
real. Possibilities that fail to get realized are, for 
determinism, pure illusions : they never were pos- 
sibilities at all. There is nothing inchoate, it says, 
about this universe of ours, all that was or is or shall 
be actual in it having been from eternity virtually 
there. The cloud of alternatives our minds escort 
this mass of actuality withal is a cloud of sheer decep- 
tions, to which ' impossibilities ' is the only name that 
rightfully belongs. 

The issue, it will be seen, is a perfectly sharp one, 
which no eulogistic terminology can smear over or 
wipe out. The truth must lie with one side or the 
other, and its lying with one side makes the other 
false. 

The question relates solely to the existence of pos- 
sibilities, in the strict sense of the term, as things that 
may, but need not, be. Both- sides admit that a voli- 
tion, for instance, has occurred. The indeterminists 
say another volition might have occurred in its place : 
the determinists swear that nothing could possibly 



1 50 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

what ' tocculrred in its place. Now, can science be 
determ. in to iell us which of these two point-blank 
Fortadicters of each other is right? Science pro- 
ieskrs to draw no conclusions but such as are based 
on matters of fact, things that have actually happened ; 
but how can any amount of assurance that something 
actually happened give us the least grain of informa- 
tion as to whether another thing might or might not 
have happened in its place ? Only facts can be proved 
by other facts. With things that are possibilities and 
not facts, facts have no concern. If we have no other 
evidence than the evidence of existing facts, the pos- 
sibility-question must remain a mystery never to be 
cleared up. 

And the truth is that facts practically have hardly 
anything to do with making us either determinists or 
indeterminists. Sure enough, we make a flourish of 
quoting facts this way or that; and if we are deter- 
minists, we talk about the infallibility with which we 
can predict one another's conduct ; while if we are 
indeterminists, we lay great stress on the fact that it 
is just because we cannot foretell one another's con- 
duct, either in war or statecraft or in any of the great 
and small intrigues and businesses of men, that life 
is so intensely anxious and hazardous a game. But 
who does not see the wretched insufficiency of this 
so-called objective testimony on both sides? What 
fills up the gaps in our minds is something not ob- 
jective, not external. What divides us into possibil- 
ity men and anti-possibility men is different faiths or 
postulates, — postulates of rationality. To this man 
the world seems more rational with possibilities in 
it, — to that man more rational with possibilities ex- 
cluded ; and talk as we will about having to yield to 



The Dilemma of Determinism. 153 

evidence, what makes us monists or pluralists, deter- 
minists or indeterminists, is at bottom always some 
sentiment like this. 

The stronghold of the deterministic sentiment is 
the antipathy to the idea of chance. As soon as we 
begin to talk indeterminism to our friends, we find a 
number of them shaking their heads. This notion of 
alternative possibility, they say, this admission that 
any one of several things may come to pass, is, after 
all, only a roundabout name for chance ; and chance is 
something the notion of which no sane mind can for 
an instant tolerate in the world. What is it, they ask, 
but barefaced crazy unreason, the negation of intelli- 
gibility and law? And if the slightest particle of it 
exist anywhere, what is to prevent the whole fabric 
from falling together, the stars from going out, and 
chaos from recommencing her topsy-turvy reign? 

Remarks of this sort about chance will put an end 
to discussion as quickly as anything one can find. 
I have already told you that ' chance ' was a word I 
wished to keep and use. Let us then examine exactly 
what it means, and see whether it ought to be such a 
terrible bugbear to us. I fancy that squeezing the 
thistle boldly will rob it of its sting. 

The sting of the word ' chance ' seems to lie in the 
assumption that it means something positive, and 
that if anything happens by chance, it must needs be 
something of an intrinsically irrational and preposter- 
ous sort. Now, chance means nothing of the kind. 
It is a purely negative and relative term, 1 giving us 

1 Speaking technically, it is a word with a positive denotation, but 
a connotation that is negative. Other things must be silent about 
what it is : it alone can decide that point at the moment in which 
it reveals itself. 



154 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

no information about that of which it is predicated, 
except that it happens to be disconnected with some- 
thing else, — not controlled, secured, or necessitated 
by other things in advance of its own actual presence. 
As this point is the most subtile one of the whole 
lecture, and at the same time the point on which all 
the rest hinges, I beg you to pay particular attention 
to it. What I say is that it tells us nothing about 
what a thing may be in itself to call it ' chance.' It 
may be a bad thing, it may be a good thing. It may 
be lucidity, transparency, fitness incarnate, matching 
the whole system of other things, when it has once 
befallen, in an unimaginably perfect way. All you 
mean by calling it ' chance ' is that this is not guar- 
anteed, that it may also fall out otherwise. For the 
system of other things has no positive hold on the 
chance-thing. Its origin is in a certain fashion nega- 
tive: it escapes, and says, Hands off! coming, when 
it comes, as a free gift, or not at all. 

This negativeness, however, and this opacity of the 
chance-thing when thus considered ab extra, or from 
the point of view of previous things or distant things, 
do not preclude its having any amount of positive- 
ness and luminosity from within, and at its own place 
and moment. All that its chance-character asserts 
about it is that there is something in it really of its 
own, something that is not the unconditional property 
of the whole. If the whole wants this property, the 
whole must wait till it can get it, if it be a matter 
of chance. That the universe may actually be a sort 
of joint-stock society of this sort, in which the sharers 
have both limited liabilities and limited powers, is of 
course a simple and conceivable notion. 

Nevertheless, many persons talk as if the minutest 



The Dilemma of Determinism. 155 

dose of disconnectedness of one part with another, 
the smallest modicum of independence, the faintest 
tremor of ambiguity about the future, for example, 
would ruin everything, and turn this goodly universe 
into a sort of insane sand-heap or nulliverse, no uni- 
verse at all. Since future human volitions are as a 
matter of fact the only ambiguous things we are 
tempted to believe in, let us stop for a moment to 
make ourselves sure whether their independent and 
accidental character need be fraught with such direful 
consequences to the universe as these. 

What is meant by saying that my choice of which 
way to walk home after the lecture is ambiguous and 
matter of chance as far as the present moment is con- 
cerned? It means that both Divinity Avenue and 
Oxford Street are called ; but that only one, and that 
one either one, shall be chosen. Now, I ask you seri- 
ously to suppose that this ambiguity of my choice is 
real; and then to make the impossible hypothesis 
that the choice is made twice over, and each time 
falls on a different street. In other words, imagine 
that I first walk through Divinity Avenue, and then 
imagine that the powers governing the universe anni- 
hilate ten minutes of time with all that it contained, 
and set me back at the door of this hall just as I was 
before the choice was made. Imagine then that, 
everything else being the same, I now make a differ- 
ent choice and traverse Oxford Street. You, as pas- 
sive spectators, look on and see the two alternative 
universes, — one of them with me walking through 
Divinity Avenue in it, the other with the same me 
walking through Oxford Street. Now, if you are de- 
terminists you believe one of these universes to have 
been from eternity impossible: you believe it to have 



156 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

been impossible because of the intrinsic irrationality 
or accidentally somewhere involved in it. But look- 
ing outwardly at these universes, can you say which 
is the impossible and accidental one, and which the 
rational and necessary one? I doubt if the most iron- 
clad determinist among you could have the slightest 
glimmer of light on this point. In other words, either 
universe after the fact and once there would, to our 
means of observation and understanding, appear just 
as rational as the other. There would be absolutely 
no criterion by which we might judge one necessary 
and the other matter of chance. Suppose now we 
relieve the gods of their hypothetical task and as- 
sume my choice, once made, to be made forever. I 
go through Divinity Avenue for good and all. If, as 
good determinists, you now begin to affirm, what all 
good determinists punctually do affirm, that in the 
nature of things I couldn't have gone through Oxford 
Street, — had I done so it would have been chance, 
irrationality, insanity, a horrid gap in nature, — I 
simply call your attention to this, that your affirma- 
tion is what the Germans call a Machtspruch, a mere 
conception fulminated as a dogma and based on no 
insight into details. Before my choice, either street 
seemed as natural to you as to me. Had I happened 
to take Oxford Street, Divinity Avenue would have 
figured in your philosophy as the gap in nature; 
and you would have so proclaimed it with the best 
deterministic conscience in the world. 

But what a hollow outcry, then, is this against a 
chance which, if it were present to us, we could by 
no character whatever distinguish from a rational ne- 
cessity ! I have taken the most trivial of examples, 
but no possible example could lead to any different 



The Dilemma of Determinism. 157 

result. For what are the alternatives which, in point 
of fact, offer themselves to human volition? What 
are those futures that now seem matters of chance? 
Are they not one and all like the Divinity Avenue 
and Oxford Street of our example? Are they not 
all of them kinds of things already here and based 
in the existing frame of nature? Is any one ever 
tempted to produce an absolute accident, something 
utterly irrelevant to the rest of the world ? Do not 
all the motives that assail us, all the futures that offer 
themselves to our choice, spring equally from the soil 
of the past ; and would not either one of them, whether 
realized through chance or through necessity, the 
moment it was realized, seem to us to fit that past, 
and in the completest and most continuous manner 
to interdigitate with the phenomena already there ? 2 

The more one thinks of the matter, the more one 
wonders that so empty and gratuitous a hubbub as 
this outcry against chance should have found so great 
an echo in the hearts of men. It is a word which 
tells us absolutely nothing about what chances, or 
about the modus operandi of the chancing ; and the 
use of it as a war-cry shows only a temper of intel- 

1 A favorite argument against free-will is that if it be true, a man's 
murderer may as probably be his best friend as his worst enemy, a 
mother be as likely to strangle as to suckle her first-born, and all of us 
be as ready to jump from fourth-story windows as to go out of front 
doors, etc. Users of this argument should properly be excluded from 
debate till they learn what the real question is. ' Free-will ' does not 
say that everything that is physically conceivable is also morally 
possible. It merely says that of alternatives that really tempt our 
will more than one is really possible. Of course, the alternatives that 
do thus tempt our will are vastly fewer than the physical possibilities 
we can coldly fancy. Persons really tempted often do murder their 
best friends, mothers do strangle their first-born, people do jump out 
of fourth-story windows, etc. 



158 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

/ectual absolutism, a demand that the world shall be 
a solid block, subject to one control, — which temper, 
which demand, the world may not be bound to gratify 
at all. In every outwardly verifiable and practical 
respect, a world in which the alternatives that now 
actually distract your choice were decided by pure 
chance would be by me absolutely undistinguished 
from the world in which I now live. I am, therefore, 
entirely willing to call it, so far as your choices go, 
a world of chance for me. To yourselves, it is true, 
those very acts of choice, which to me are so blind, 
opaque, and external, are the opposites of this, for 
you are within them and effect them. To you they 
appear as decisions; and decisions, for him who 
makes them, are altogether peculiar psychic facts. 
Self-luminous and self-justifying at the living mo- 
ment at which they occur, they appeal to no outside 
moment to put its stamp upon them or make them 
continuous with the rest of nature. Themselves it 
is rather who seem to make nature continuous ; and 
in their strange and intense function of granting con- 
sent to one possibility and withholding it from another, 
to transform an equivocal and double future into an 
inalterable and simple past. 

But with the psychology of the matter we have no 
concern this evening. The quarrel which determinism 
has with chance fortunately has nothing to do with 
this or that psychological detail. It is a quarrel 
altogether metaphysical. Determinism denies the 
ambiguity of future volitions, because it affirms that 
nothing future can be ambiguous. But we have said 
enough to meet the issue. Indeterminate future voli- 
tions do mean chance. Let us not fear to shout it 
from the house-tops if need be ; for we now know that 



The Dilemma of Determinism. 159 

the idea of chance is, at bottom, exactly the same thing 
as the idea of gift, — the one simply being a dispar- 
aging, and the other a eulogistic, name for anything 
on which we have no effective claim. And whether 
the world be the better or the worse for having either 
chances or gifts in it will depend altogether on what 
these uncertain and unclaimable things turn out to be. 

And this at last brings us within sight of our sub- 
ject. We have seen what determinism means: we 
have seen that indeterminism is rightly described as 
meaning chance ; and we have seen that chance, 
the very name of which we are urged to shrink from 
as from a metaphysical pestilence, means only the 
negative fact that no part of the world, however big, 
can claim to control absolutely the destinies of the 
whole. But although, in discussing the word ' chance/ 
I may at moments have seemed to be arguing for its 
real existence, I have not meant to do so yet. We 
have not yet ascertained whether this be a world ol 
chance or no ; at most, we have agreed that it seems 
so. And I now repeat what I said at the outset, that, 
from any strict theoretical point of view, the question 
is insoluble. To deepen our theoretic sense of the 
difference between a world with chances in it and a 
deterministic world is the most I can hope to do ; and 
this I may now at last begin upon, after all our tedi- 
ous clearing of the way. 

I wish first of all to show you just what the notion 
that this is a deterministic world implies. The impli- 
cations I call your attention to are all bound up with 
the fact that it is a world in which we constantly 
have to make what I shall, with your permission, call 
judgments of regret. Hardly an hour passes in 



t6*o Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

which we do not wish that something might be other- 
wise ; and happy indeed are those of us whose hearts 
have never echoed the wish of Omar Khayam — 

" That we might clasp, ere closed, the book of fate, 
And make the writer on a fairer leaf 
Inscribe our names, or quite obliterate. 

"Ah! Love, could you and I with fate conspire 
To mend this sorry scheme of things entire, 
Would we not shatter it to bits, and then 
Remould it nearer to the heart's desire ? " 

Now, it is undeniable that most of these regrets are 
foolish, and quite on a par in point of philosophic 
value with the criticisms on the universe of that friend 
of our infancy, the hero of the fable The Atheist and 
the Acorn, — 

" Fool ! had that bough a pumpkin bore, 
Thy whimsies would have worked no more," etc. 

Even from the point of view of our own ends, we 
should probably make a botch of remodelling the 
universe. How much more then from the point of 
view of ends we cannot see ! Wise men therefore 
regret as little as they can. But still some regrets 
are pretty obstinate and hard to stifle, — regrets 
for acts of wanton cruelty or treachery, for exam- 
ple, whether performed by others or by ourselves. 
Hardly any one can remain entirely optimistic after 
reading the confession of the murderer at Brockton 
the other day: how, to get rid of the wife whose 
continued existence bored him, he inveigled her into 
a desert spot, shot her four times, and then, as she 
lay on the ground and said to him, " You did n't do 
it on purpose, did you, dear?" replied, "No, I 



The Dilemma of Determinism. 161 

did n't do it on purpose," as he raised a rock and 
smashed her skull. Such an occurrence, with the 
mild sentence and self-satisfaction of the prisoner, 
is a field for a crop of regrets, which one need not 
take up in detail. We feel that, although a perfect 
mechanical fit to the rest of the universe, it is a bad 
moral fit, and that something else would really have 
been better in its place. 

But for the deterministic philosophy the murder, 
the sentence, and the prisoner's optimism were all 
necessary from eternity; and nothing else for a 
moment had a ghost of a chance of being put into 
their place. To admit such a chance, the deter- 
minists tell us, would be to make a suicide of reason; 
so we must steel our hearts against the thought. 
And here our plot thickens, for we see the first of 
those difficult implications of determinism and mon- 
ism which it is my purpose to make you feel. If this 
Brockton murder was called for by the rest of the 
universe, if it had to come at its preappointed hour, 
and if nothing else would have been consistent with 
the sense of the whole, what are we to think of the 
universe? Are we stubbornly to stick to our judg- 
ment of regret, and say, though it couldn't be, yet 
it would have been a better universe .with something 
different from this Brockton murder in it? That, of 
course, seems the natural and spontaneous thing for 
us to do ; and yet it is nothing short of deliberately 
espousing a kind of pessimism. The judgment of 
regret calls the murder bad. Calling a thing bad 
means, if it mean anything at all, that the thing 
ought not to be, that something else ought to be in 
its stead. Determinism, in denying that anything 
else can be in its stead, virtually defines the universe 



1 62 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

as a place in which what ought to be is impossible,— « 
in other words, as an organism whose constitution 
is afflicted with an incurable taint, an irremediable 
flaw. The pessimism of a Schopenhauer says no 
more than this, — that the murder is a symptom ; 
and that it is a vicious symptom because it belongs 
to a vicious whole, which can express its nature no 
otherwise than by bringing forth just such a symp- 
tom as that at this particular spot. Regret for the 
murder must transform itself, if we are determinists 
and wise, into a larger regret. It is absurd to regret 
the murder alone. Other things being what they are, 
it could not be different. What we should regret is 
that whole frame of things of which the murder is one 
member. I see no escape whatever from this pessi- 
mistic conclusion, if, being determinists, our judgment 
of regret is to be allowed to stand at all. 

The only deterministic escape from pessimism is 
everywhere to abandon the judgment of regret. That 
this can be done, history shows to be not impossible. 
The devil, quoad existentiam, may be good. That is, 
although he be a principle of evil, yet the universe, 
with such a principle in it, may practically be a 
better universe than it could have been without. On 
every hand, in a small way, we find that a certain 
amount of evil is a condition by which a higher form 
of good is bought. There is nothing to prevent 
anybody from generalizing this view, and trusting 
that if we could but see things in the largest of all 
ways, even such matters as this Brockton murder 
would appear to be paid for by the uses that follow 
in their train. An optimism quand merne> a syste- 
matic and infatuated optimism like that ridiculed 
by Voltaire in his Candide, is one of the possible 



The Dilemma of Determinism. 163 

ideal ways in which a man may train himself to look 
on life. Bereft of dogmatic hardness and lit up with 
the expression of a tender and pathetic hope, such 
an optimism has been the grace of some of the most 
religious characters that ever lived. 

" Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast, 
And all is clear from east to west." 

Even cruelty and treachery may be among the 
absolutely blessed fruits of time, and to quarrel with 
any of their details may be blasphemy. The only 
real blasphemy, in short, may be that pessimistic 
temper of the soul which lets it give way to such 
things as regrets, remorse, and grief. 

Thus, our deterministic pessimism may become a 
deterministic optimism at the price of extinguishing 
our judgments of regret. 

But does not this immediately bring us into a 
curious logical predicament? Our determinism leads 
us to call our judgments of regret wrong, because 
they are pessimistic in implying that what is impossi- 
ble yet ought to be. But how then about the judg- 
ments of regret themselves ? If they are wrong, other 
judgments, judgments of approval presumably, ought 
to be in their place. But as they are necessitated, 
nothing else can be in their place ; and the universe 
is just what it was before, — namely, a place in which 
what ought to be appears impossible. We have got 
one foot out of the pessimistic bog, but the other one 
sinks all the deeper. We have rescued our actions 
from the bonds of evil, but our judgments are now 
held fast. When murders and treacheries cease to be 
sins, regrets are theoretic absurdities and errors. The 
theoretic and the active life thus play a kind of see- 



164 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

saw with each other on the ground of evil. The rise 
of either sends the other down. Murder and treach- 
ery cannot be good without regret being bad : regret 
cannot be good without treachery and murder being 
bad. Both, however, are supposed to have been 
foredoomed ; so something must be fatally unreason- 
able, absurd, and wrong in the world. It must be a 
place of which either sin or error forms a necessary 
part. From this dilemma there seems at first sight 
no escape. Are we then so soon to fall back into the 
pessimism from which we thought we had emerged? 
And is there no possible way by which we may, with 
good intellectual consciences, call the cruelties and 
the treacheries, the reluctances and the regrets, all 
good together? 

Certainly there is such a way, and you are probably 
most of you ready to formulate it yourselves. But, 
before doing so, remark how inevitably the question 
of determinism and indeterminism slides us into the 
question of optimism and pessimism, or, as our fathers 
called it, ' the question of evil.' The theological form 
of all these disputes is the simplest and the deepest, 
the form from which there is the least escape, — not 
because, as some have sarcastically said, remorse and 
regret are clung to with a morbid fondness by the 
theologians as spiritual luxuries, but because they are 
existing facts of the world, and as such must be taken 
into account in the deterministic interpretation of all 
that is fated to be. If they are fated to be error, does 
not the bat's wing of irrationality still cast its shadow 
over the world? 

The refuge from the quandary lies, as I said, not 
far off. The necessary acts we erroneously regret 



The Dilemma of Determinism. 165 

may be good, and yet our error in so regretting them 
may be also good, on one simple condition ; and that 
condition is this : The world must not be regarded as 
a machine whose final purpose is the making real of 
any outward good, but rather as a contrivance for 
deepening the theoretic consciousness of what good- 
ness and evil in their intrinsic natures are. Not the 
doing either of good or of evil is what nature cares 
for, but the knowing of them. Life is one long eating 
of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. I am in the 
habit, in thinking to myself, of calling this point of 
view the gnostical point of view. According to it, the 
world is neither an optimism nor a pessimism, but a 
gnosticism. But as this term may perhaps lead to 
some misunderstandings, I will use it as little as pos- 
sible here, and speak rather of subjectivism, and the 
subjectivistic point of view. 

Subjectivism has three great branches, — we may 
call them scientificism, sentimentalism, and sensual- 
ism, respectively. They all agree essentially about 
the universe, in deeming that what happens there is 
subsidiary to what we think or feel about it. Crime 
justifies its criminality by awakening our intelligence 
of that criminality, and eventually our remorses and 
regrets ; and the error included in remorses and re- 
grets, the error of supposing that the past could have 
been different, justifies itself by its use. Its use is to 
quicken our sense of what the irretrievably lost is. 
When we think of it as that which might have been 
('the saddest words of tongue or pen'), the quality 
of its worth speaks to us with a wilder sweetness ; and, 
conversely, the dissatisfaction wherewith we think of 
what seems to have driven it from its natural place 
gives us the severer pang. Admirable artifice of 



1 66 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

nature ! we might be tempted to exclaim, — deceive 
ing us in order the better to enlighten us, and leaving 
nothing undone to accentuate to our consciousness 
the yawning distance of those opposite poles of good 
and evil between which creation swings. 

We have thus clearly revealed to our view what 
may be called the dilemma of determinism, so far as 
determinism pretends to think things out at all. A 
merely mechanical determinism, it is true, rather 
rejoices in not thinking them out. It is very sure 
that the universe must satisfy its postulate of a phy- 
sical continuity and coherence, but it smiles at any 
one who comes forward with a postulate of moral co- 
herence as well. I may suppose, however, that the 
number of purely mechanical or hard determinists 
among you this evening is small. The determinism 
to whose seductions you are most exposed is what 
I have called soft determinism, — the determinism 
which allows considerations of good and bad to 
mingle with those of cause and effect in deciding 
what sort of a universe this may rationally be held 
to be. The dilemma of this determinism is one 
whose left horn is pessimism and whose right horn is 
subjectivism. In other words, if determinism is to 
escape pessimism, it must leave off looking at the 
goods and ills of life in a simple objective way, and 
regard them as materials, indifferent in themselves, 
for the production of consciousness, scientific and 
ethical, in us. 

To escape pessimism is, as we all know, no easy 
task. Your own studies have sufficiently shown you 
the almost desperate difficulty of making the notion 
that there is a single principle of things, and that 
principle absolute perfection, rhyme together with 



The Dilemma of Determinism. 167 

our daily vision of the facts of life. If perfection be 
the principle, how comes there any imperfection 
here? If God be good, how came he to create — ■ 
or, if he did not create, how comes he to permit — the 
devil? The evil facts must be explained as seeming: 
the devil must be whitewashed, the universe must be 
disinfected, if neither God's goodness nor his unity 
and power are to remain impugned. And of all 
the various ways of operating the disinfection, and 
making bad seem less bad, the way of subjectivism 
appears by far the best. 1 

For, after all, is there not something rather absurd 
in our ordinary notion of external things being good 
or bad in themselves? Can murders and treacheries, 
considered as mere outward happenings, or motions 
of matter, be bad without any one to feel their bad- 
ness? And could paradise properly be good in the 
absence of a sentient principle by which the goodness 
was perceived? Outward goods and evils seem prac- 
tically indistinguishable except in so far as they 
result in getting moral judgments made about them. 
But then the moral judgments seem the main thing, 
and the outward facts mere perishing instruments for 
their production. This is subjectivism. Every one 
must at some time have wondered at that strange 
paradox of our moral nature, that, though the pur- 

1 To a reader who says he is satisfied with a pessimism, and has 
no objection to thinking the whole bad, I have no more to say: he 
makes fewer demands on the world than I, who, making them, wish 
to look a little further before I give up all hope of having them sat- 
isfied. If, however, all he means is that the badness of some parts 
does not prevent his acceptance of a universe whose other parts give 
him satisfaction, I welcome him as an ally. He has abandoned the 
notion of the Whole, which is the essence of deterministic monism, 
and views things as a pluralism, just as I do in this paper. 



1 68 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

suit of outward good is the breath of its nostrils, the 
attainment of outward good would seem to be its 
suffocation and death. Why does the painting of any 
paradise or Utopia, in heaven or on earth, awaken 
such yawnings for nirvana and escape? The white- 
robed harp-playing heaven of our sabbath-schools, 
and the ladylike tea-table elysium represented in 
Mr. Spencer's Data of Ethics, as the final consumma- 
tion of progress, are exactly on a par in this respect, 
— lubberlands, pure and simple, one and all. 1 We 
look upon them from this delicious mess of insanities 
and realities, strivings and deadnesses, hopes and 
fears, agonies and exultations, which forms our pres- 
ent state, and tedium vitce is the only sentiment they 
awaken in our breasts. To our crepuscular natures, 
born for the conflict, the Rembrandtesque moral 
chiaroscuro, the shifting struggle of the sunbeam in 
the gloom, such pictures of light upon light are 
vacuous and expressionless, and neither to be en- 
joyed nor understood. If this be the whole fruit ot 
the victory, we say; if the generations of mankind 
suffered and laid down their lives ; if prophets con- 
fessed and martyrs sang in the fire, and all the sacred 
tears were shed for no other end than that a race of 
creatures of such unexampled insipidity should suc- 
ceed, and protract in saecula saeculorum their con- 
tented and inoffensive lives, — why, at such a rate, 
better lose than win the battle, or at all events better 
ring down the curtain before the last act of the play, 
so that a business that began so importantly may be 
saved from so singularly flat a winding-up. 

1 Compare Sir James Stephen's Essays by a Barrister, London, 
1862, pp. 138, 318. 



The Dilemma of Determinism. 169 

All this is what I should instantly say, were I called 
on to plead for gnosticism ; and its real friends, of 
whom you will presently perceive I am not one, would 
say without difficulty a great deal more. Regarded 
as a stable finality, every outward good becomes a 
mere weariness to the flesh. It must be menaced, be 
occasionally lost, for its goodness to be fully felt as 
such. Nay, more than occasionally lost. No one 
knows the worth of innocence till he knows it is gone 
forever, and that money cannot buy it back. Not the 
saint, but the sinner that repenteth, is he to whom 
the full length and breadth, and height and depth, of 
life's meaning is revealed. Not the absence of vice, 
but vice there, and virtue holding her by the throat, 
seems the ideal human state. And there seems no 
reason to suppose it not a permanent human state. 
There is a deep truth in what the school of Schopen- 
hauer insists on, — the illusoriness of the notion of 
moral progress. The more brutal forms of evil that go 
are replaced by others more subtle and more poison- 
ous. Our moral horizon moves with us as we move, 
and never do we draw nearer to the far-off line where 
the black waves and the azure meet. The final pur- 
pose of our creation seems most plausibly to be the 
greatest possible enrichment of our ethical conscious- 
ness, through the intensest play of contrasts and the 
widest diversity of characters. This of course obliges 
some of us to be vessels of wrath, while it calls others 
to be vessels of honor. But the subjectivist point of 
view reduces all these outward distinctions to a com- 
mon denominator. The wretch languishing in the 
felon's cell may be drinking draughts of the wine of 
truth that will never pass the lips of the so-called fa- 
vorite of fortune. And the peculiar consciousness ot 



170 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

each of them is an indispensable note in the great 
ethical concert which the centuries as they roll are 
grinding out of the living heart of man. 

So much for subjectivism ! If the dilemma of de- 
terminism be to choose between it and pessimism, I 
see little room for hesitation from the strictly theo- 
retical point of view. Subjectivism seems the more 
rational scheme. And the world may, possibly, for 
aught I know, be nothing else. When the healthy 
love of life is on one, and all its forms and its appe- 
tites seem so unutterably real ; when the most brutal 
and the most spiritual things are lit by the same sun, 
and each is an integral part of the total richness, — 
why, then it seems a grudging and sickly way of meet- 
ing so robust a universe to shrink from any of its facts 
and wish them not to be. Rather take the strictly 
dramatic point of view, and treat the whole thing as a 
great unending romance which the spirit of the uni- 
verse, striving to realize its own content, is eternally 
thinking out and representing to itself. 1 

No one, I hope, will accuse me, after I have said 
all this, of underrating the reasons in favor of subjec- 
tivism. And now that I proceed to say why those 
reasons, strong as they are, fail to convince my own 
mind, I trust the presumption may be that my objec- 
tions are stronger still. 

I frankly confess that they are of a practical order. 
If we practically take up subjectivism in a sincere and 
radical manner and follow its consequences, we meet 
with some that make us pause. Let a subjectivism 

1 Cet univers est un spectacle que Dieu se donne a lui-meme. 
Servons les intentions du grand chorege en contribuant a rendre la 
spectacle aussi brillant, aussi varie que possible. — Ren an. 



The Dilemma of Determinism. 171 

begin in never so severe and intellectual a way, it is 
forced by the law of its nature to develop another 
side of itself and end with the corruptest curiosity. 
Once dismiss the notion that certain duties are good 
in themselves, and that we are here to do them, no 
matter how we feel about them ; once consecrate the 
opposite notion that our performances and our vio- 
lations of duty are for a common purpose, the at- 
tainment of subjective knowledge and feeling, and 
that the deepening of these is the chief end of our 
lives, — and at what point on the downward slope are 
we to stop? In theology, subjectivism develops as 
its ' left wing ' antinomianism. In literature, its left 
wing is romanticism. And in practical life it is ei- 
ther a nerveless sentimentality or a sensualism with- 
out bounds. 

Everywhere it fosters the fatalistic mood of mind. 
It makes those who are already too inert more passive 
still ; it renders wholly reckless those whose energy is 
already in excess. All through history we find how 
subjectivism, as soon as it has a free career, exhausts 
itself in every sort of spiritual, moral, and practical 
license. Its optimism turns to an ethical indiffer- 
ence, which infallibly brings dissolution in its train. 
It is perfectly safe to say now that if the Hegelian 
gnosticism, which has begun to show itself here and 
in Great Britain, were to become a popular philosophy, 
as it once was in Germany, it would certainly develop 
its left wing here as there, and produce a reaction of 
disgust. Already I have heard a graduate of this 
very school express in the pulpit his willingness to sin 
like David, if only he might repent like David. You 
may tell me he was only sowing his wild, or rather 
his tame, oats ; and perhaps he was. But the point is 



172 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

that in the subjectivistic or gnostical philosophy oat- 
sowing, wild or tame, becomes a systematic necessity 
and the chief function of life. After the pure and 
classic truths, the exciting and rancid ones must be 
experienced ; and if the stupid virtues of the philistine 
herd do not then come in and save society from the 
influence of the children of light, a sort of inward 
putrefaction becomes its inevitable doom. 

Look at the last runnings of the romantic school, as 
we see them in that strange contemporary Parisian 
literature, with which we of the less clever countries 
are so often driven to rinse out our minds after they 
have become clogged with the dulness and heaviness 
of our native pursuits. The romantic school began 
with the worship of subjective sensibility and the re- 
volt against legality of which Rousseau was the first 
great prophet: and through various fluxes and re- 
fluxes, right wings and left wings, it stands to-day 
with two men of genius, M. Renan and M. Zola, as its 
principal exponents, — one speaking with its mascu- 
line, and the other with what might be called its fem- 
inine, voice. I prefer not to think now of less noble 
members of the school, and the Renan I have in mind 
is of course the Renan of latest dates. As I have 
used the term gnostic, both he and Zola are gnostics 
of the most pronounced sort. Both are athirst for 
the facts of life, and both think the facts of human 
sensibility to be of all facts the most worthy of atten- 
tion. Both agree, moreover, that sensibility seems to 
be there for no higher purpose, — certainly not, as 
the Philistines say, for the sake of bringing mere out- 
ward rights to pass and frustrating outward wrongs. 
One dwells on the sensibilities for their energy, the 
other for their sweetness ; one speaks with a voice of 



The Dilemma of Determinism. 173 

bronze, the other with that of an yEolian harp ; one 
ruggedly ignores the distinction of good and evil, the 
other plays the coquette between the craven unman- 
liness of his Philosophic Dialogues and the butterfly 
optimism of his Souvenirs de Jeunesse. But under the 
pages of both there sounds incessantly the hoarse bass 
of vanitas vanitaturn, omnia vanitas, which the reader 
may hear, whenever he will, between the lines. No 
writer of this French romantic school has a word of 
rescue from the hour of satiety with the things of life, 
— the hour in which we say, " I take no pleasure in 
them," — or from the hour of terror at the world's 
vast meaningless grinding, if perchance such hours 
should come. For terror and satiety are facts of sen- 
sibility like any others ; and at their own hour they 
reign in their own right. The heart of the romantic 
utterances, whether poetical, critical, or historical, is 
this inward remedilessness, what Carlyle calls this far- 
off whimpering of wail and woe. And from this ro- 
mantic state of mind there is absolutely no possible 
theoretic escape. Whether, like Renan, we look upon 
life in a more refined way, as a romance of the spirit ; 
or whether, like the friends of M. Zola, we pique our- 
selves on our ' scientific ' and ' analytic ' character, and 
prefer to be cynical, and call the world a ' roman ex- 
perimental ' on an infinite scale, — in either case the 
world appears to us potentially as what the same Car- 
lyle once called it, a vast, gloomy, solitary Golgotha 
and mill of death. 

The only escape is by the practical way. And 
since I have mentioned the nowadays much-reviled 
name of Carlyle, let me mention it once more, and 
say it is the way of his teaching. No matter for 
Carlyle's life, no matter for a great deal of his writ- 



174 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

ing. What was the most important thing he said 
to us? He said: "Hang your sensibilities! Stop 
your snivelling complaints, and your equally snivel- 
ling raptures ! Leave off your general emotional 
tomfoolery, and get to WORK like men ! " But this 
means a complete rupture with the subjectivist phil- 
osophy of things. It says conduct, and not sensibil- 
ity, is the ultimate fact for our recognition. With 
the vision of certain works to be done, of certain 
outward changes to be wrought or resisted, it says 
our intellectual horizon terminates. No matter how- 
we succeed in doing these outward duties, whether 
gladly and spontaneously, or heavily and unwillingly, 
do them we somehow must ; for the leaving of them 
undone is perdition. No matter how we feel ; if we 
are only faithful in the outward act and refuse to do 
wrong, the world will in so far be safe, and we quit of 
our debt toward it. Take, then, the yoke upon our 
shoulders ; bend our neck beneath the heavy legality 
of its weight ; regard something else than our feeling 
as our limit, our master, and our law; be willing to 
live and die in its service, — and, at a stroke, we 
have passed from the subjective into the objective 
philosophy of things, much as one awakens from some 
feverish dream, full of bad lights and noises, to find 
one's self bathed in the sacred coolness and quiet of 
the air of the night. 

But what is the essence of this philosophy of 
objective conduct, so old-fashioned and finite, but 
so chaste and sane and strong, when compared with 
its romantic rival? It is the recognition of limits, 
foreign and opaque to our understanding. It is the 
willingness, after bringing about some external good, 
to feel at peace ; for our responsibility ends with the 



The Dilemma of Determinism. 175 

performance of that duty, and the burden of the rest 
we may lay on higher powers. 1 

" Look to thyself, O Universe, 
Thou art better and not worse," 

we may say in that philosophy, the moment we have 
done our stroke of conduct, however small. For in 
the view of that philosophy the universe belongs to 
a plurality of semi-independent forces, each one of 
which may help or hinder, and be helped or hindered 
by, the operations of the rest. 

But this brings us right back, after such a long 
detour, to the question of indeterminism and to the 
conclusion of all I came here to say to-night. For 
the only consistent way of representing a pluralism and 
a world whose parts may affect one another through 
their conduct being either good or bad is the inde- 
terministic way. What interest, zest, or excitement 
can there be in achieving the right way, unless we 
are enabled to feel that the wrong way is also a pos- 
sible and a natural way, — nay, more, a menacing 
and an imminent way? And what sense can there 
be in condemning ourselves for taking the wrong 
way, unless we need have done nothing of the sort, 
unless the right way was open to us as well? I can- 
not understand the willingness to act, no matter how 
we feel, without the belief that acts are really good 
and bad. I cannot understand the belief that an act 
is bad, without regret at its happening. I cannot 
understand regret without the admission of real, 
genuine possibilities in the world. Only then is it 

1 The burden, for example, of seeing to it that the end of all our 
righteousness be some positive universal gain. 



176 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

other than a mockery to feel, after we have failed to 
do our best, that an irreparable opportunity is gone 
from the universe, the loss of which it must forever 
after mourn. 

If you insist that this is all superstition, that pos- 
sibility is in the eye of science and reason impossi- 
bility, and that if I act badly 't is that the universe 
was foredoomed to suffer this defect, you fall right 
back into the dilemma, the labyrinth, of pessimism 
and subjectivism, from out of whose toils we have just 
wound our way. 

Now, we are of course free to fall back, if we 
please. For my own part, though, whatever difficul- 
ties may beset the philosophy of objective right and 
wrong, and the indeterminism it seems to imply, 
determinism, with its alternative of pessimism or 
romanticism, contains difficulties that are greater 
still. But you will remember that I expressly repu- 
diated awhile ago the pretension to offer any argu- 
ments which could be coercive in a so-called scientific 
fashion in this matter. And I consequently find 
myself, at the end of this long talk, obliged to state 
my conclusions in an altogether personal way. This 
personal method of appeal seems to be among the 
very conditions of the problem ; and the most any 
one can do is to confess as candidly as he can the 
grounds for the faith that is in him, and leave his 
example to work on others as it may. 

Let me, then, without circumlocution say just this. 
The world is enigmatical enough in all conscience, 
whatever theory we may take up toward it. The 
indeterminism I defend, the free-will theory of popu- 
lar sense based on the judgment of regret, represents 



The Dilemma of Determinism. 177 

that world as vulnerable, and liable to be injured by- 
certain of its parts if they act wrong. And it repre- 
sents their acting wrong as a matter of possibility or 
accident, neither inevitable nor yet to be infallibly 
warded off. In all this, it is a theory devoid either 
of transparency or of stability. It gives us a plural- 
istic, restless universe, in which no single point of 
view can ever take in the whole scene; and to a 
mind possessed of the love of unity at any cost, it 
will, no doubt, remain forever inacceptable. A friend 
with such a mind once told me that the thought of 
my universe made him sick, like the sight of the 
horrible motion of a mass of maggots in their car- 
rion bed. 

But while I freely admit that the pluralism and the 
restlessness are repugnant and irrational in a certain 
way, I find that every alternative to them is irra- 
tional in a deeper way. The indeterminism with its 
maggots, if you please to speak so about it, offends 
only the native absolutism of my intellect, — an 
absolutism which, after all, perhaps, deserves to be 
snubbed and kept in check. But the determinism 
with its necessary carrion, to continue the figure of 
speech, and with no possible maggots to eat the lat- 
ter up, violates my sense of moral reality through 
and through. When, for example, I imagine such 
carrion as the Brockton murder, I cannot conceive it 
as an act by which the universe, as a whole, logically 
and necessarily expresses its nature without shrink- 
ing from complicity with such a whole. And I 
deliberately refuse to keep on terms of loyalty with 
the universe by saying blankly that the murder, since 
it does flow from the nature of the whole, is not 
carrion. There are some instinctive reactions which 

12 



178 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

I, for one, will not tamp.er with. The only remain- 
ing alternative, the attitude of gnostical romanticism, 
wrenches my personal instincts in quite as violent a 
way. It falsifies the simple objectivity of their deliv- 
erance. It makes the goose-flesh the murder excites 
in me a sufficient reason for the perpetration of the 
crime. It transforms life from a tragic reality into 
an insincere melodramatic exhibition, as foul or as 
tawdry as any one's diseased curiosity pleases to 
carry it out. And with its consecration of the ' ro- 
man naturaliste ' state of mind, and its enthronement 
of the baser crew of Parisian litterateurs among the 
eternally indispensable organs by which the infinite 
spirit of things attains to that subjective illumina- 
tion which is the task of its life, it leaves me in pre- 
sence of a sort of subjective carrion considerably 
more noisome than the objective carrion I called it in 
to take away. 

No ! better a thousand times, than such systematic 
corruption of our moral sanity, the plainest pessi- 
mism, so that it be straightforward; but better far 
than that the world of chance. Make as great an 
uproar about chance as you please, I know that 
chance means pluralism and nothing more. If some 
of the members of the pluralism are bad, the philos- 
ophy of pluralism, whatever broad views it may deny 
me, permits me, at least, to turn to the other mem- 
bers with a clean breast of affection and an unsophis- 
ticated moral sense. And if I still wish to think of 
the world as a totality, it lets me feel that a world 
with a chance in it of being altogether good, even if 
the chance never come to pass, is better than a world 
with no such chance at all. That ' chance ' whose 
very notion I am exhorted and conjured to banish 



The Dilemma of Determinism. 179 

from my view of the future as the suicide of reason 
concerning it, that ' chance ' is — what? Just this, — ■ 
the chance that in moral respects the future may be 
other and better than the past has been. This is the 
only chance we have any motive for supposing to 
exist. Shame, rather, on its repudiation and its de- 
nial ! For its presence is the vital air which lets the 
world live, the salt which keeps it sweet. 

And here I might legitimately stop, having ex- 
pressed all I care to see admitted by others to-night. 
But I know that if I do stop here, misapprehensions 
will remain in the minds of some of you, and keep 
all I have said from having its effect; so I judge it 
best to add a few more words. 

In the first place, in spite of all my explanations, the 
word ' chance ' will still be giving trouble. Though 
you may yourselves be adverse to the deterministic 
doctrine, you wish a pleasanter word than '.chance ' 
to name the opposite doctrine by; and you very 
likely consider my preference for such a word a per- 
verse sort of a partiality on my part. It certainly is 
a bad word to make converts with ; and you wish I 
had not thrust it so butt-foremost at you, — you wish 
to use a milder term. 

Well, I admit there may be just a dash of pervers- 
ity in its choice. The spectacle of the mere word- 
grabbing game played by the soft determinists has 
perhaps driven me too violently the other way ; and," 
rather than be found wrangling with them for the 
good words, I am willing to take the first bad one 
which comes along, provided it be unequivocal. The 
question is of things, not of eulogistic names for them ; 
and the best word is the one that enables men to 



180 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

know the quickest whether they disagree or not about 
the things. But the word ' chance,' with its singular 
negativity, is just the word for this purpose. Who- 
ever uses it instead of ' freedom/ squarely and reso- 
lutely gives up all pretence to control the things he 
says are free. For him, he confesses that they are no 
better than mere chance would be. It is a word of 
impotence, and is therefore the only sincere word we 
can use, if, in granting freedom to certain things, we 
grant it honestly, and really risk the game. " Who 
chooses me must give and forfeit all he hath." Any 
other word permits of quibbling, and lets us, after the 
fashion of the soft determinists, make a pretence of 
restoring the caged bird to liberty with one hand, 
while with the other we anxiously tie a string to its 
leg to make sure it does not get beyond our sight. 

But now you will bring up your final doubt. Does 
not the admission of such an unguaranteed chance or 
freedom preclude utterly the notion of a Providence 
governing the world? Does it not leave the fate of 
the universe at the mercy of the chance-possibilities, 
and so far insecure? Does it not, in short, deny the 
craving of our nature for an ultimate peace behind all 
tempests, for a blue zenith above all clouds? 

To this my answer must be very brief. The belief 
in free-will is not in the least incompatible with the 
belief in Providence, provided you do not restrict the 
Providence to fulminating nothing but fatal decrees. 
If you allow him to provide possibilities as well as 
actualities to the universe, and to carry on his own 
thinking in those two categories just as we do ours, 
chances may be there, uncontrolled even by him, 
and the course of the universe be really ambiguous; 



The Dilemma of Determinism. 181 

and yet the end of all things may be just what he 
intended it to be from all eternity. 

An analogy will make the meaning of this clear. 
Suppose two men before a chessboard, — the one a 
novice, the other an expert player of the game. The 
expert intends to beat. But he cannot foresee 
exactly what any one actual move of his adversary 
may be. He knows, however, all the possible moves 
of the latter ; and he knows in advance how to meet 
each of them by a move of his own which leads in 
the direction of victory. And the victory infallibly 
arrives, after no matter how devious a course, in the 
one predestined form of check-mate to the novice's 
king. 

Let now the novice stand for us finite free agents, 
and the expert for the infinite mind in which the 
universe lies. Suppose the latter to be thinking out 
his universe before he actually creates it. Suppose 
him to say, I will lead things to a certain end, but I 
will not now a decide on all the steps thereto. At 
various points, ambiguous possibilities shall be left 

1 This of course leaves the creative mind subject to the law of 
time. And to any one who insists on the timelessness of that mind 
I have no reply to make. A mind to whom all time is simultaneously 
present must see all things under the form of actuality, or under 
some form to us unknown. If he thinks certain moments as am- 
biguous in their content while future, he must simultaneously know 
how the ambiguity will have been decided when they are past. So 
that none of his mental judgments can possibly be called hypothetical, 
and his world is one from which chance is excluded. Is not, how- 
ever, the timeless mind rather a gratuitous fiction ? And is not the 
notion of eternity being given at a stroke to omniscience only just 
another way of whacking upon us the block-universe, and of denying 
that possibilities exist ? — just the point to be proved. To say that 
time is an illusory appearance is only a roundabout manner of say- 
ing there is no real plurality, and that the frame of things is an 
absolute unit. Admit plurality, and time may be its form. 



1 82 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

open, either of which, at a given instant, may become 
actual. But whichever branch of these bifurcations 
become real, I know what I shall do at the next bi- 
furcation to keep things from drifting away from the 
final result I intend. 1 

The creator's plan of the universe would thus be 
left blank as to many of its actual details, but all 
possibilities would be marked down. The realization 
of some of these would be left absolutely to chance ; 
that is, would only be determined when the moment 
of realization came. Other possibilities would be 
contingently determined ; that is, their decision would 
have to wait till it was seen how the matters of ab- 
solute chance fell out. But the rest of the plan, in- 
cluding its final upshot, would be rigorously deter« 
mined once for all. So the creator himself would not 
need to know all the details of actuality until they 
came ; and at any time his own view of the world 
would be a view partly of facts and partly of possi- 
bilities, exactly as ours is now. Of one thing, how- 
ever, he might be certain ; and that is that his world 
was safe, and that no matter how much it might zig- 
zag he could surely bring it home at last. 

1 And this of course means ' miraculous ' interposition, but not 
necessarily of the gross sort our fathers took such delight in repre- 
senting, and which has so lost its magic for us. Emerson quotes 
some Eastern sage as saying that if evil were really done under the 
sun, the sky would incontinently shrivel to a snakeskin and cast it 
out in spasms. But, says Emerson, the spasms of Nature are years 
and centuries ; and it will tax man's patience to wait so long. We 
may think of the reserved possibilities God keeps in his own hand, 
under as invisible and molecular and slowly self-summating a form 
as we please. We may think of them as counteracting human 
agencies which he inspires ad hoc. In short, signs and wonders and 
convulsions of the earth and sky are not the only neutralizers of 
obstruction to a god's plans of which it is possible to think. 



The Dilemma of Determinism. 183 

Now, it is entirely immaterial, in this scheme, 
whether the creator leave the absolute chance-possi- 
bilities to be decided by himself, each when its proper 
moment arrives, or whether, on the contrary, he 
alienate this power from himself, and leave the de- 
cision out and out to finite creatures such as we men 
are. The great point is that the possibilities are 
really here. Whether it be we who solve them, or he 
working through us, at those soul-trying moments 
when fate's scales seem to quiver, and good snatches 
the victory from evil or shrinks nerveless from the 
fight, is of small account, so long as we admit that 
the issue is decided nowhere else than here and now. 
That is what gives the palpitating reality to our moral 
life and makes it tingle, as Mr. Mallock says, with so 
strange and elaborate an excitement. This reality, 
this excitement, are what the determinisms, hard and 
soft alike, suppress by their denial that anything is 
decided here and now, and their dogma that all things 
were foredoomed and settled long ago. If it be so, 
may you and I then have been foredoomed to the 
error of continuing to believe in liberty. 1 It is for- 
tunate for the winding up of controversy that in every 
discussion with determinism this argumentum ad 
hominem can be its adversary's last word. 

1 As long as languages contain a future perfect tense, determinists, 
following the bent of laziness or passion, the lines of least resistance, 
can reply in that tense, saying, " It will have been fated," to the still 
small voice which urges an opposite course ; and thus excuse them- 
selves from effort in a quite unanswerable way. 



184 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 



THE MORAL PHILOSOPHER AND THE 
MORAL LIFE. 1 

THE main purpose of this paper is to show that 
there is no such thing possible as an ethical 
philosophy dogmatically made up in advance. We 
all help to determine the content of ethical philosophy 
so far as we contribute to the race's moral life. In 
other words, there can be no final truth in ethics any 
more than in physics, until the last man has had his 
experience and said his say. In the one case as in 
the other, however, the hypotheses which we now 
make while waiting, and the acts to which they 
prompt us, are among the indispensable conditions 
which determine what that ' say ' shall be. 

First of all, what is the position of him who seeks 
an ethical philosophy? To begin with, he must be 
distinguished from all those who are satisfied to be 
ethical sceptics. He will not be a sceptic ; there- 
fore so far from ethical scepticism being one possible 
fruit of ethical philosophizing, it can only be regarded 
as that residual alternative to all philosophy which 
from the outset menaces every would-be philosopher 
who may give up the quest discouraged, and renounce 
his original aim. That aim is to find an account of 
the moral relations that obtain among things, which 

1 An Address to the Yale Philosophical Club, published in the 
International Journal of Ethics, April, 1891. 



The Moral Philosopher and Moral Life. 185 

will weave them into the unity of a stable system, and 
make of the world what one may call a genuine uni- 
verse from the ethical point of view. So far as the 
world resists reduction to the form of unity, so far as 
ethical propositions seem unstable, so far does the 
philosopher fail of his ideal. The subject-matter of 
his study is the ideals he finds existing in the world ; 
the purpose which guides him is this ideal of his own, 
of getting them into a certain form. This ideal is 
thus a factor in ethical philosophy whose legitimate 
presence must never be overlooked ; it is a positive 
contribution which the philosopher himself necessa- 
rily makes to the problem. But it is his only positive 
contribution. At the outset of his inquiry he ought to 
have no other ideals. Were he interested peculiarly 
in the triumph of any one kind of good, he would pro 
tanto cease to be a judicial investigator, and become 
an advocate for some limited element of the case. 

There are three questions in ethics which must be 
kept apart. Let them be called respectively the psy- 
chological question, the metaphysical question, and the 
casuistic question. The psychological question asks 
after the historical origin of our moral ideas and judg- 
ments ; the metaphysical question asks what the very 
meaning of the words 'good,' 'ill,' and 'obligation' 
are ; the casuistic question asks what is the measure 
of the various goods and ills which men recognize, 
so that the philosopher may settle the true order of 
human obligations. 

I. 

The psychological question is for most disputants 
the only question. When your ordinary doctor of 



1 86 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

divinity has proved to his own satisfaction that an 
altogether unique faculty called ' conscience ' must be 
postulated to tell us what is right and what is wrong ; 
or when your popular-science enthusiast has pro- 
claimed that ' apriorism ' is an exploded superstition, 
and that our moral judgments have gradually resulted 
from the teaching of the environment, each of these 
persons thinks that ethics is settled and nothing more 
is to be said. The familiar pair of names, Intuitionist 
and Evolutionist, so commonly used now to connote 
all possible differences in ethical opinion, really refer 
to the psychological question alone. The discussion 
of this question hinges so much upon particular de- 
tails that it is impossible to enter upon it at all within 
the limits of this paper. I will therefore only express 
dogmatically my own belief, which is this, — that the 
Benthams, the Mills, and the Bains have done a lasting 
service in taking so many of our human ideals and 
showing how they must have arisen from the asso- 
ciation with acts of simple bodily pleasures and reliefs 
from pain. Association with many remote pleasures 
will unquestionably make a thing significant of good- 
ness in our minds ; and the more vaguely the good- 
ness is conceived of, the more mysterious will its 
source appear to be. But it is surely impossible to 
explain all our sentiments and preferences in this 
simple way. The more minutely psychology studies 
human nature, the more clearly it finds there traces 
of secondary affections, relating the impressions of 
the environment with one another and with our 
impulses in quite different ways from those mere 
associations of coexistence and succession which are 
practically all that pure empiricism can admit. Take 
the love of drunkenness ; take bashfulness, the terror 



The Moral Philosopher and Moral Life. 187 

of high places, the tendency to sea-sickness, to faint 
at the sight of blood, the susceptibility to musical 
sounds ; take the emotion of the comical, the passion 
for poetry, for mathematics, or for metaphysics, — 
no one of these things can be wholly explained by 
either association or utility. They go with other 
things that can be so explained, no doubt ; and some 
of them are prophetic of future utilities, since there is 
nothing in us for which some use may not be found. 
But their origin is in incidental complications to our 
cerebral structure, a structure whose original features 
arose with no reference to the perception of such dis- 
cords and harmonies as these. 

Well, a vast number of our moral perceptions also 
are certainly of this secondary and brain-born kind. 
They deal with directly felt fitnesses between things, 
and often fly in the teeth of all the prepossessions 
■)f habit and presumptions of utility. The moment 
you get beyond the coarser and more commonplace 
moral maxims, the Decalogues and Poor Richard's 
Almanacs, you fall into schemes and positions which 
to the eye of common-sense are fantastic and over- 
strained. The sense for abstract justice which some 
persons have is as excentric a variation, from the 
natural-history point of view, as is the passion for 
music or for the higher philosophical consistencies 
which consumes the soul of others. The feeling of 
the inward dignity of certain spiritual attitudes, as 
peace, serenity, simplicity, veracity ; and of the es- 
sential vulgarity of others, as querulousness, anxiety, 
egoistic fussiness, etc., — are quite inexplicable ex- 
cept by an innate preference of the more ideal 
attitude for its own pure sake. The nobler thing 
tastes better, and that is all that we can say. 'Ex- 



1 88 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

perience ' of consequences may truly teach us what 
things are wicked, but what have consequences to 
do with what is mean and vulgar? If a man has 
shot his wife's paramour, by reason of what sub- 
tile repugnancy in things is it that we are so dis- 
gusted when we hear that the wife and the husband 
have made it up and are living comfortably together 
again? Or if the hypothesis were offered us of a 
world in which Messrs. Fourier's and Bellamy's and 
Morris's Utopias should all be outdone, and millions 
kept permanently happy on the one simple condition 
that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things 
should lead a life of lonely torture, what except a 
specifical and independent sort of emotion can it be 
which would make us immediately feel, even though 
an impulse arose within us to clutch at the happiness 
so offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoy- 
ment when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such 
a bargain? To what, once more, but subtile brain- 
born feelings of discord can be due all these recent 
protests against the entire race-tradition of retributive 
justice? — I refer to Tolstoi' with his ideas of non- 
resistance, to Mr. Bellamy with his substitution of 
oblivion for repentance (in his novel of Dr. Heiden- 
hain's Process), to M. Guyau with his radical con- 
demnation of the punitive ideal. All these subtileties 
of the moral sensibility go as much beyond what can 
be ciphered out from the ' laws of association ' as 
the delicacies of sentiment possible between a pair 
of young lovers go beyond such precepts of the 
'etiquette to be observed during engagement' as 
are printed in manuals of social form. 

No ! Purely inward forces are certainly at work 
here. All the higher, more penetrating ideals are 



The Moral Philosopher and Moral Life. 189 

revolutionary. They present themselves far less in 
the guise of effects of past experience than in that of 
probable causes of future experience, factors to which 
the environment and the lessons it has so far taught 
as must learn to bend. 

This is all I can say of the psychological question 
now. In the last chapter of a recent work 1 I have 
sought to prove in a general way the existence, in our 
thought, of relations which do not merely repeat the 
couplings of experience. Our ideals have certainly 
many sources. They are not all explicable as signify- 
ing corporeal pleasures to be gained, and pains to be 
escaped. And for having so constantly perceived 
this psychological fact, we must applaud the intui- 
tionist school. Whether or not such applause must 
be extended to that school's other characteristics will 
appear as we take up the following questions. 

The next one in order is the metaphysical question, 
of what we mean by the words ' obligation,' ' good,' 
and ' ill.' 

II. 

First of all, it appears that such words can have no 
application or relevancy in a world in which no 
sentient life exists. Imagine an absolutely material 
world, containing only physical and chemical facts, 
and existing from eternity without a God, without 
even an interested spectator: would there be any 
sense in saying of that world that one of its states is 
better than another? Or if there were two such 
worlds possible, would there be any rhyme or reason 
in calling one good and the other bad, — good or 

1 The Principles of Psychology, New York, H. Holt & Co* 
1890. 



190 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

bad positively, I mean, and apart from the fact that 
one might relate itself better than the other to the 
philosopher's private interests? But we must leave 
these private interests out of the account, for the 
philosopher is a mental fact, and we are asking whether 
goods and evils and obligations exist in physical facts 
per se. Surely there is no status for good and evil to 
exist in, in a purely insentient world. How can one 
physical fact, considered simply as a physical fact, be 
' better' than another? Betterness is not a physical 
relation. In its mere material capacity, a thing can 
no more be good or bad than it can be pleasant or 
painful. Good for what? Good for the production 
of another physical fact, do you say? But what in a 
purely physical universe demands the production of 
that other fact? Physical facts simply are or are 
not ; and neither when present or absent, can they 
be supposed to make demands. If they do, they can 
only do so by having desires ; and then they have 
ceased to be purely physical facts, and have become 
facts of conscious sensibility. Goodness, badness, and 
obligation must be realized somewhere in order really 
to exist; and the first step in ethical philosophy is to 
see that no merely inorganic ' nature of things ' can 
realize them. Neither moral relations nor the moral 
law can swing in vacuo. Their only habitat can be a 
mind which feels them ; and no world composed of 
merely physical facts can possibly be a world to which 
ethical propositions apply. 

The moment one sentient being, however, is made 
a part of the universe, there is a chance for goods 
and evils really to exist. Moral relations now have 
their status ; in that being's consciousness. So far as 
he feels anything to be good, he makes it good. It 



The Moral Philosopher and Moral Life. 191 

is good, for him ; and being good for him, is abso- 
lutely good, for he is the sole creator of values in 
that universe, and outside of his opinion things have 
no moral character at all. 

In such a universe as that it would of course be 
absurd to raise the question of whether the solitary- 
thinker's judgments of good and ill are true or not. 
Truth supposes a standard outside of the thinker to 
which he must conform; but here the thinker is a 
sort of divinity, subject to no higher judge. Let us 
call the supposed universe which he inhabits a moral 
solitude. In such a moral solitude it is clear that 
there can be no outward obligation, and that the only 
trouble the god-like thinker is liable to have will be 
over the consistency of his own several ideals with 
one another. Some of these will no doubt be more 
pungent and appealing than the rest, their goodness 
will have a profounder, more penetrating taste ; they 
will return to haunt him with more obstinate regrets 
if violated. So the thinker will have to order his life 
with them as its chief determinants, or else remain 
inwardly discordant and unhappy. Into whatever 
equilibrium he may settle, though, and however he 
may straighten out his system, it will be a right sys- 
tem; for beyond the facts of his own subjectivity 
there is nothing moral in the world. 

If now we introduce a second thinker with his likes 
and dislikes into the universe, the ethical situation 
becomes much more complex, and several possibili- 
ties are immediately seen to obtain. 

One of these is that the thinkers may ignore each 
other's attitude about good and evil altogether, and 
each continue to indulge his own preferences, indif- 
ferent to what the other may feel or do. In such a 



192 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

case we have a world with twice as much of the ethical 
quality in it as our moral solitude, only it is without 
ethical unity. The same object is good or bad there, 
according as you measure it by the view which this 
one or that one of the thinkers takes. Nor can you 
find any possible ground in such a world for saying 
that one thinker's opinion is more correct than the 
other's, or that either has the trurer moral sense. Such 
a world, in short, is not a moral universe but a moral 
dualism. Not only is there no single point of view 
within it from which the values of things can be une- 
quivocally judged, but there is not even a demand 
for such a point of view, since the two thinkers are 
supposed to be indifferent to each other's thoughts 
and acts. Multiply the thinkers into a pluralism, and 
we find realized for us in the ethical sphere something 
like that world which the antique sceptics conceived 
of, — in which individual minds are the measures of 
all things, and in which no one ' objective ' truth, 
but only a multitude of ' subjective ' opinions, can be 
found. 

But this is the kind of world with which the philo- 
sopher, so long as he holds to the hope of a philoso- 
phy, will not put up. Among the various ideals rep- 
resented, there must be, he thinks, some which have 
the more truth or authority ; and to these the others 
ought to yield, so that system and subordination 
may reign. Here in the word * ought ' the notion of 
obligation comes emphatically into view, and the 
next thing in order must be to make its meaning 
clear. 

Since the outcome of the discussion so far has been 
to show us that nothing can be good or right except 



The Moral Philosopher and Moral Life. 193 

so far as some consciousness feels it to be good or 
thinks it to be right, we perceive on the very thresh- 
old that the real superiority and authority which are 
postulated by the philosopher to reside in some of 
the opinions, and the really inferior character which 
ne supposes must belong to others, cannot be ex- 
plained by any abstract moral ' nature of things ' 
existing antecedently to the concrete thinkers them- 
selves with their ideals. Like the positive attributes 
good and bad, the comparative ones better and worse 
must be realized in order to be real. If one ideal 
judgment be objectively better than another, that 
betterness must be made flesh by being lodged con- 
cretely in some one's actual perception. It cannot 
float in the atmosphere, for it is not a sort of mete- 
orological phenomenon, like the aurora borealis or 
the zodiacal light. Its esse is percipi, like the esse of 
the ideals themselves between which it obtains. The 
philosopher, therefore, who seeks to know which ideal 
ought to have supreme weight and which one ought 
to be subordinated, must trace the ought itself to the 
de facto constitution of some existing consciousness, 
behind which, as one of the data of the universe, he 
as a purely ethical philosopher is unable to go. This 
consciousness must make the one ideal right by feel- 
ing it to be right, the other wrong by feeling it to 
be wrong. But now what particular consciousness in 
the universe can enjoy this prerogative of obliging 
others to conform to a rule which it lays down? 

If one of the thinkers were obviously divine, while 
all the rest were human, there would probably be 
no practical dispute about the matter. The divine 
thought would be the model, to which the others 
should conform. But still the theoretic question 



194 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

would remain, What is the ground of the obligation, 
even here? 

In our first essays at answering this question, there 
is an inevitable tendency to slip into an assumption 
which ordinary men follow when they are disputing 
with one another about questions of good and bad. 
They imagine an abstract moral order in which the 
objective truth resides ; and each tries to prove that 
this pre-existing order is more accurately reflected in 
his own ideas than in those of his adversary. It is 
because one disputant is backed by this overarching 
abstract order that we think the other should submit. 
Even so, when it is a question no longer of two finite 
thinkers, but of God and ourselves, — we follow our 
usual habit, and imagine a sort of de jure relation, 
which antedates and overarches the mere facts, and 
would make it right that we should conform our 
thoughts to God's thoughts, even though he made 
no claim to that effect, and though we preferred de 
facto to go on thinking for ourselves. 

But the moment we take a steady look at the ques- 
tion, we see not only that without a claim actually 
made by some concrete person there can be no obliga- 
tion, but that there is some obligation wherever there 
is a claim. Claim and obligation are, in fact, coex- 
tensive terms; they cover each other exactly. Our 
ordinary attitude of regarding ourselves as subject 
to an overarching system of moral relations, true ' in 
themselves,' is therefore either an out-and-out super- 
stition, or else it must be treated as a merely provi- 
sional abstraction from that real Thinker in whose 
actual demand upon us to think as he does our 
obligation must be ultimately based. In a theistic- 
ethical philosophy that thinker in question is, of 



The Moral Philosopher and Moral Life. 195 

course, the Deity to whom the existence of the 
universe is due. 

I know well how hard it is for those who are 
accustomed to what I have called the superstitious 
view, to realize that every de facto claim creates in so 
far forth an obligation. We inveterately think that 
something which we call the ' validity ' of the claim is 
what gives to it its obligatory character, and that this 
validity is something outside of the claim's mere ex- 
istence as a matter of fact. It rains down upon the 
claim, we think, from some sublime dimension of 
being, which the moral law inhabits, much as upon 
the steel of the compass-needle the influence of the 
Pole rains down from out of the starry heavens. But 
again, how can such an inorganic abstract character 
of imperativeness, additional to the imperativeness 
which is in the concrete claim itself, exist? Take any 
demand, however slight, which any creature, however 
weak, may make. Ought it not, for its own sole sake, 
to be satisfied? If not, prove why not. The only 
possible kind of proof you could adduce would be 
the exhibition of another creature who should make 
a demand that ran the other way. The only possible 
reason there can be why any phenomenon ought to 
exist is that such a phenomenon actually is desired. 
Any desire is imperative to the extent of its amount; 
it makes itself valid by the fact that it exists at all. 
Some desires, truly enough, are small desires ; they 
are put forward by insignificant persons, and we cus- 
tomarily make light of the obligations which they 
bring. But the fact that such personal demands as 
these impose small obligations does not keep the 
largest obligations from being personal demands. 

If we must talk impersonally, to be sure we can say 



196 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

that ' the universe ' requires, exacts, or makes obliga- 
tory such or such an action, whenever it expresses 
itself through the desires of such or such a creature. 
But it is better not to talk about the universe in this 
personified way, unless we believe in a universal or 
divine consciousness which actually exists. If there 
be such a consciousness, then its demands carry the 
most of obligation simply because they are the great 
est in amount. But it is even then not abstractly 
right that we should respect them. It is only con- 
cretely right, — or right after the fact, and by virtue 
of the fact, that they are actually made. Suppose we 
do not respect them, as seems largely to be the case 
in this queer world. That ought not to b,e, we say ; 
that is wrong. But in what way is this fact of wrong- 
ness made more acceptable or intelligible when we 
imagine it to consist rather in the laceration of an a 
priori ideal order than in the disappointment of a living 
personal God? Do we, perhaps, think that we cover 
God and protect him and make his impotence over us 
less ultimate, when we back him up with this a priori 
blanket from which he may draw some warmth of 
further appeal? But the only force of appeal to us, 
which either a living God or an abstract ideal order 
can wield, is found in the ' everlasting ruby vaults ' of 
our own human hearts, as they happen to beat re- 
sponsive and not irresponsive to the claim. So far as 
they do feel it when made by a living consciousness, 
it is life answering to life. A claim thus livingly ac- 
knowledged is acknowledged with a solidity and ful- 
ness which no thought of an ' ideal ' backing can 
render more complete; while if, on the other hand, 
the heart's response is withheld, the stubborn phe- 
nomenon is there of an impotence in the claims 



The Moral Philosopher and Moral Life. 197 

which the universe embodies, which no talk about 
an eternal nature of things can gloze over or dispel. 
An ineffective d priori order is as impotent a thing 
as an ineffective God ; and in the eye of philosophy, 
it is as hard a thing to explain. 

We may now consider that what we distinguished 
as the metaphysical question in ethical philosophy 
is sufficiently answered, and that we have learned 
what the words ' good/ ' bad,' and ' obligation ' sev- 
erally mean. They mean no absolute natures, inde- 
pendent of personal support. They are objects c 
feeling and desire, which have no foothold or anchc 
age in Being, apart from the existence of actu' 
living minds. 

Wherever such minds exist, with judgments of 
good and ill, and demands upon one another, there 
is an ethical world in its essential features. Were 
all other things, gods and men and starry heavens, 
blotted out from this universe, and were there left 
but one rock with two loving souls upon it, that rock 
would have as thoroughly moral a constitution as any 
possible world which the eternities and immensities 
could harbor. It would be a tragic constitution, be- 
cause the rock's inhabitants would die. But while 
they lived, there would be real good things and real 
bad things in the universe; there would be obliga- 
tions, claims, and expectations ; obediences, refusals, 
and disappointments ; compunctions and longings for 
harmony to come again, and inward peace of con- 
science when it was restored ; there would, in short, 
be a moral life, whose active energy would have no 
limit but the intensity of interest in each other with 
which the hero and heroine might be endowed. 



/ 



198 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

We, on this terrestrial globe, so far as the visible 
facts go, are just like the inhabitants of such a rock. 
Whether a God exist, or whether no God exist, in 
yon blue heaven above us bent, we form at any rate 
an ethical republic here below. And the first reflec- 
tion which this leads to is that ethics have as genu- 
ine and real a foothold in a universe where the highest 
consciousness is human, as in a universe where there 
is a God as well. ' The religion of humanity ' affords 
a basis for ethics as well as theism does. Whether 
the purely human system can gratify the philoso- 
pher's demand as well as the other is a different ques- 
tion, which we ourselves must answer ere we close. 



III. 

The last fundamental question in Ethics was, it will 
be remembered, the casuistic question. Here we are, 
in a world where the existence of a divine thinker has 
been and perhaps always will be doubted by some of 
the lookers-on, and where, in spite of the presence 
of a large number of ideals in which human beings 
agree, there are a mass of others about which no 
general consensus obtains. It is hardly necessary to 
present a literary picture of this, for the facts are too 
well known. The wars of the flesh and the spirit in 
each man, the concupiscences of different individuals 
pursuing the same unshareable material or social 
prizes, the ideals which contrast so according to races, 
circumstances, temperaments, philosophical beliefs, 
etc., — all form a maze of apparently inextricable con- 
fusion with no obvious Ariadne's thread to lead one 
out. Yet the philosopher, just because he is a philo- 
sopher, adds his own peculiar ideal to the confusion 



The Moral Philosopher and Moral Life. 199 

(with which if he were willing to be a sceptic he 
would be passably content), and insists that over all 
these individual opinions there is a system of truth 
which he can discover if he only takes sufficient pains. 

We stand ourselves at present in the place of that 
philosopher, and must not fail to realize all the features 
that the situation comports. In the first place we 
will not be sceptics; we hold to it that there is a 
truth to be ascertained. But in the second place we 
have just gained the insight that that truth cannot be 
a self-proclaiming set of laws, or an abstract ' moral 
reason,' but can only exist in act, or in the shape of 
an opinion held by some thinker really to be found. 
There is, however, no visible thinker invested with 
authority. Shall we then simply proclaim our own 
ideals as the lawgiving ones ? No ; for if we are true 
philosophers we must throw our own spontaneous 
ideals, even the dearest, impartially in with that total 
mass of ideals which are fairly to be judged. But how 
then can we as philosophers ever find a test; how 
avoid complete moral scepticism on the one hand, 
and on the other escape bringing a wayward personal 
standard of our own along with us, on which we sim- 
ply pin our faith? 

The dilemma is a hard one, nor does it grow a bit 
more easy as we revolve it in our minds. The entire 
undertaking of the philosopher obliges him to seek 
an impartial test. That test, however, must be incar- 
nated in the demand of some actually existent per- 
son ; and how can he pick out the person save by an 
act in which his own sympathies and prepossessions 
are implied? 

One method indeed presents itself, and has as a 
matter of history been taken by the more serious 



200 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

ethical schools. If the heap of things demanded 
proved on inspection less chaotic than at first they 
seemed, if they furnished their own relative test and 
measure, then the casuistic problem would be solved. 
If it were found that all goods qua goods contained a 
common essence, then the amount of this essence 
involved in any one good would show its rank in the 
scale of goodness, and order could be quickly made ; 
for this essence would be the good upon which all 
thinkers were agreed, the relatively objective and 
universal good that the philosopher seeks. Even his 
own private ideals would be measured by their share 
of it, and find their rightful place among the rest. 

Various essences of good have thus been found and 
proposed as bases of the ethical system. Thus, to be 
a mean between two extremes ; to be recognized by 
a special intuitive faculty ; to make the agent happy 
for the moment; to make others as well as him 
happy in the long run ; to add to his perfection or 
dignity ; to harm no one ; to follow from reason or 
flow from universal law ; to be in accordance with the 
will of God ; to promote the survival of the human 
species on this planet, — are so many tests, each of 
which has been maintained by somebody to consti- 
tute the essence of all good things or actions so far 
as they are good. 

No one of the measures that have been actually 
proposed has, however, given general satisfaction. 
Some are obviously not universally present in all 
cases, — e. g., the character of harming no one, or 
that of following a universal law ; for the best course 
is often cruel ; and many acts are reckoned good on 
the sole condition that they be exceptions, and serve 
not as examples of a universal law. Other charac- 



The Moral Philosopher and Moral Life. 201 

ters, such as following the will of God, are unascer- 
tainable and vague. Others again, like survival, are 
quite indeterminate in their consequences, and leave 
us in the lurch where we most need their help : a 
philosopher of the Sioux Nation, for example, will 
be certain to use the survival-criterion in a very dif- 
ferent way from ourselves. The best, on the whole, 
of these marks and measures of goodness seems to be 
the capacity to bring happiness. But in order not to 
break down fatally, this test must be taken to cover 
innumerable acts and impulses that never aim at hap- 
piness ; so that, after all, in seeking for a universal 
principle we inevitably are carried onward to the 
most universal principle, — that the essence of good is 
simply to satisfy demand. The demand may be for 
anything under the sun. There is really no more 
ground for supposing that all our demands can be 
accounted for by one universal underlying kind of 
motive than there is ground for supposing that all 
physical phenomena are cases of a single law. The 
elementary forces in ethics are probably as plural as 
those of physics are. The various ideals have no 
common character apart from the fact that they are 
ideals. No single abstract principle can be so used 
as to yield to the philosopher anything like a scien- 
tifically accurate and genuinely useful casuistic scale. 

A look at another peculiarity of the ethical universe, 
as we find it, wiJ.l still further show us the philoso- 
pher's perplexities. As a purely theoretic problem, 
namely, the casuistic question would hardly ever 
come up at all. If the ethical philosopher were only 
asking after the best imaginable system of goods he 
would indeed have an easy task ; for all demands as 



i 



20 2 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

such are primd facie respectable, and the best simply 
imaginary world would be one in which every demand 
was gratified as soon as made. Such a world would, 
however, have to have a physical constitution entirely 
different from that of the one which we inhabit. It 
would need not only a space, but a time, ' of ^-di- 
mensions,' to include all the acts and experiences 
incompatible with one another here below, which 
would then go on in conjunction, — such as spending 
our money, yet growing rich ; taking our holiday, yet 
getting ahead with our work; shooting and fishing, 
yet doing no hurt to the beasts; gaining no end of 
experience, yet keeping our youthful freshness of 
heart; and the like. There can be no question that 
such a system of things, however brought about, 
would be the absolutely ideal system ; and that if a 
philosopher could create universes a priori, and pro- 
vide all the mechanical conditions, that is the sort of 
universe which he should unhesitatingly create. 

But this world of ours is made on an entirely diffe- 
rent pattern, and the casuistic question here is most 
tragically practical. The actually possible in this 
world is vastly narrower than all that is demanded ; 
and there is always a pinch between the ideal and the 
actual which can only be got through by leaving part 
of the ideal behind. There is hardly a good which 
we can imagine except as competing for the pos- 
session of the same bit of space and time with some 
other imagined good. Every end of desire that pre- 
sents itself appears exclusive of some other end of 
desire. Shall a man drink and smoke, or keep his 
nerves in condition? — he cannot do both. Shall he 
follow his fancy for Amelia, or for Henrietta? — both 
cannot be the choice of his heart. Shall he have the 



The Moral Philosopher and Moral Life. 203 

dear old Republican party, or a spirit of unsophistica- 
tion in public affairs? — he cannot have both, etc. 
So that the ethical philosopher's demand for the right 
scale of subordination in ideals is the fruit of an alto- 
gether practical need. Some part of the ideal must 
be butchered, and he needs to know which part. It 
is a tragic situation, and no mere speculative conun- 
drum, with which he has to deal. 

Now we are blinded to the real difficulty of the 
philosopher's task by the fact that we are born into a 
society whose ideals are largely ordered already. If 
we follow the ideal which is conventionally highest, 
the others which we butcher either die and do not re- 
turn to haunt us ; or if they come back and accuse us 
of murder, every one applauds us for turning to them 
a deaf ear. In other words, our environment encour- 
ages us not to be philosophers but partisans. The 
philosopher, however, cannot, so long as he clings to 
his own ideal of objectivity, rule out any ideal from 
being heard. . He is confident, and rightly confident, 
that the simple taking counsel of his own intuitive 
preferences would be certain to end in a mutilation of 
the fulness of the truth. The poet Heine is said to 
have written ' Bunsen ' in the place of ' Gott ' in his 
copy of that author's work entitled " God in His- 
tory," so as to make it read ' Bunsen in der Geschichte.' 
Now, with no disrespect to the good and learned 
Baron, is it not safe to say that any single philos- 
opher, however wide his sympathies, must be just 
such a Bunsen in der Geschichte of the moral world, 
so soon as he attempts to put his own ideas of order 
into that howling mob of desires, each struggling to 
get breathing-room for the ideal to which it clings? 
The very best of men must not only be insensible, but 



204 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

be ludicrously and peculiarly insensible, to many 
goods. As a militant, fighting free-handed that the 
goods to which he is sensible may not be submerged 
and lost from out of life, the philosopher, like every 
other human being, is in a natural position. But 
think of Zeno and of Epicurus, think of Calvin and of 
Paley, think of Kant and Schopenhauer, of Herbert 
Spencer and John Henry Newman, no longer as one- 
sided champions of special ideals, but as schoolmas- 
ters deciding what all must think, — and what more 
grotesque topic could a satirist wish for on which to 
exercise his pen? The fabled attempt of Mrs. Part- 
ington to arrest the rising tide of the North Atlantic 
with her broom was a reasonable spectacle compared 
with their effort to substitute the content of their 
clean-shaven systems for that exuberant mass of 
goods with which all human nature is in travail, and 
groaning to bring to the light of day. Think, further- 
more, of such individual moralists, no longer as mere 
schoolmasters, but as pontiffs armed with the tempo- 
ral power, and having authority in every concrete 
case of conflict to order which good shall be butch- 
ered and which shall be suffered to survive, — and the 
notion really turns one pale. All one's slumbering 
revolutionary instincts waken at the thought of any 
single moralist wielding such powers of life and death. 
Better chaos forever than an order based on any 
closet-philosopher's rule, even though he were the 
most enlightened possible member of his tribe. No ! 
if the philosopher is to keep his judicial position, he 
must never become one of the parties to the fray. 

What can he do, then, it will now be asked, except 
to fall back on scepticism and give up the notion of 
being a philosopher at all? 



The Moral Philosopher and Moral Life. 205 

But do we not already see a perfectly definite path 
of escape which is open to him just because he is a 
philosopher, and not the champion of one particular 
ideal? Since everything which is demanded is by 
that fact a good, must not the guiding principle for 
ethical philosophy (since all demands conjointly can- 
not be satisfied in this poor world) be simply to sat- 
isfy at all times as many demands as we can? That 
act must be the best act, accordingly, which makes 
for the best whole, in the sense of awakening the least 
sum of dissatisfactions. In the casuistic scale, there- 
fore, those ideals must be written highest which pre- 
vail at the least cost, or by whose realization the least 
possible number of other ideals are destroyed. Since 
victory and defeat there must be, the victory to be 
philosophically prayed for is that of the more inclu- 
sive side, — of the side which even in the hour of 
triumph will to some degree do justice to the ideals 
in which the vanquished party's interests lay. The 
course of history is nothing but the story of men's 
struggles from generation to generation to find the 
more and more inclusive order. Invent some manner 
of realizing your own ideals which will also satisfy the 
alien demands, — that and that only is the path of 
peace ! Following this path, society has shaken itself 
into one sort of relative equilibrium after another by a 
series of social discoveries quite analogous to those of 
science. Polyandry and polygamy and slavery, pri- 
vate warfare and liberty to kill, judicial torture and 
arbitrary royal power have slowly succumbed to act- 
ually aroused complaints ; and though some one's 
ideals are unquestionably the worse off for each im- 
provement, yet a vastly greater total number of them 
find shelter in our civilized society than in the older 



206 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

savage ways. So far then, and up to date, the casuis- 
tic scale is made for the philosopher already far bet- 
ter than he can ever make it for himself. An experi- 
ment of the most searching kind has proved that the 
laws and usages of the land are what yield the maxi- 
mum of satisfaction to the thinkers taken all together. 
The presumption in cases of conflict must always be 
in favor of the conventionally recognized good. The 
philosopher must be a conservative, and in the con- 
struction of his casuistic scale must put the things most 
in accordance with the customs of the community on 
top. 

And yet if he be a true philosopher he must see 
that there is nothing final in any actually given equi- 
librium of human ideals, but that, as our present 
laws and customs have fought and conquered other 
past ones, so they will in their turn be overthrown 
by any newly discovered order which will hush up 
the complaints that they still give rise to, without 
producing others louder still. " Rules are made for 
man, not man for rules," — that one sentence is 
enough to immortalize Green's Prolegomena to 
Ethics. And although a man always risks much 
when he breaks away from established rules and 
strives to realize a larger ideal whole than they per- 
mit, yet the philosopher must allow that it is at 
all times open to any one to make the experiment, 
provided he fear not to stake his life and character 
upon the throw. The pinch is always here. Pent in 
under every system of moral rules are innumerable 
persons whom it weighs upon, and goods which it 
represses ; and these are always rumbling and grum- 
bling in the background, and ready for any issue by 
which they may get free. See the abuses which the 



The Moral Philosopher and Moral Life. 207 

institution of private property covers, so that even 
to-day it is shamelessly asserted among us that one 
of the prime functions of the national government is 
to help the adroiter citizens to grow rich. See the 
unnamed and unnamable sorrows which the tyranny, 
on the whole so beneficent, of the marriage-institu- 
tion brings to so many, both of the married and the 
unwed. See the wholesale loss of opportunity under 
our regime of so-called equality and industrialism, 
with the drummer and the counter-jumper in the 
saddle, for so many faculties and graces which could 
flourish in the feudal world. See our kindliness for 
the humble and the outcast, how it wars with that 
stern weeding-out which until now has been the 
condition of every perfection in the breed. See 
everywhere the struggle and the squeeze ; and ever- 
lastingly the problem how to make them less. The 
anarchists, nihilists, and free-lovers; the free-silver- 
ites, socialists, and single-tax men; the free-traders 
and civil-service reformers; the prohibitionists and 
anti-vivisectionists ; the radical darwinians with their 
idea of the suppression of the weak, — these and 
all the conservative sentiments of society arrayed 
against them, are simply deciding through actual 
experiment by what sort of conduct the maximum 
amount of good can be gained and kept in this world. 
These experiments are to be judged, not a priori, 
but by actually finding, after the fact of their making, 
how much more outcry or how much appeasement 
comes about. What closet-solutions can possibly 
anticipate the result of trials made on such a scale? 
Or what can any superficial theorist's judgment be 
worth, in a world where every one of hundreds of 
ideals has its special champion already provided 



208 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

in the shape of some genius expressly born to feel 
it, and to fight to death in its behalf? The pure 
philosopher can only follow the windings of the 
spectacle, confident that the line of least resistance 
will always be towards the richer and the more 
inclusive arrangement, and that by one tack after 
another some approach to the kingdom of heaven 
is incessantly made. 

IV. 

All this amounts to saying that, so far as the casu- 
istic question goes, ethical science is just like phy- 
sical science, and instead of being deducible all at 
once from abstract principles, must simply bide its 
time, and be ready to revise its conclusions from day 
to day. The presumption of course, in both sciences, 
always is that the vulgarly accepted opinions are 
true, and the right casuistic order that which public 
opinion believes in ; and surely it would be folly 
quite as great, in most of us, to strike out independ- 
ently and to aim at originality in ethics as in physics. 
Every now and then, however, some one is born 
with the right to be original, and his revolutionary 
thought or action may bear prosperous fruit. He 
may replace old ' laws of nature ' by better ones ; 
he may, by breaking old moral rules in a certain 
place, bring in a total condition of things more ideal 
than would have followed had the rules been kept. 

On the whole, then, we must conclude that no 
philosophy of ethics is possible in the old-fashioned 
absolute sense of the term. Everywhere the ethical 
philosopher must wait on facts. The thinkers who 
create the ideals come he knows not whence, their 
sensibilities are evolved he knows not how ; and the 



The Moral Philosopher and Moral Life. 209 

question as to which of two conflicting ideals will 
give the best universe then and there, can be answered 
by him only through the aid of the experience of other 
men. I said some time ago, in treating of the ' first ' 
question, that the intuitional moralists deserve credit 
for keeping most clearly to the psychological facts. 
They do much to spoil this merit on the whole, how- 
ever, by mixing with it that dogmatic temper which, 
by absolute distinctions and unconditional ' thou shalt 
nots,' changes a growing, elastic, and continuous life 
into a superstitious system of relics and dead bones. 
In point of fact, there are no absolute evils, and 
there are no non-moral goods; and the highest 
ethical life — however few may be called to bear 
its burdens — consists at all times in the breaking of 
rules which have grown too narrow for the actual 
case. There is but one unconditional commandment, 
which is that we should seek incessantly, with fear 
and trembling, so to vote and to act as to bring 
about the very largest total universe of good which 
we can see. Abstract rules indeed can help ; but 
they help the less in proportion as our intuitions 
are more piercing, and our vocation is the stronger 
for the moral life* For every real dilemma is in 
literal strictness a unique situation; and the exact 
combination of ideals realized and ideals disap- 
pointed which each decision creates is always a uni- 
verse without a precedent, and for which no adequate 
previous rule exists. The philosopher, then, qud 
philosopher, is no better able to determine the best 
universe in the concrete emergency than other men. 
He sees, indeed, somewhat better than most men 
what the question always is, — not a question of this 
good or that good simply taken, but of the two total 

14 



2io Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

universes with which these goods respectively belong. 
He knows that he must vote always for the richer 
universe, for the good which seems most organizable, 
most fit to enter into complex combinations, most 
apt to be a member of a more inclusive whole. But 
which particular universe this is he cannot know for 
certain in advance ; he only knows that if he makes 
a bad mistake the cries of the wounded will soon 
inform him of the fact. In all this the philosopher is 
just like the rest of us non-philosophers, so far as we 
are just and sympathetic instinctively, and so far as 
we are open to the voice of complaint. His function 
is in fact indistinguishable from that of the best kind 
of statesman at the present day. His books upon 
ethics, therefore, so far as they truly touch the moral 
life, must more and more ally themselves with a 
literature which is confessedly tentative and sugges- 
tive rather than dogmatic, — I mean with novels and 
dramas of the deeper sort, with sermons, with books 
on statecraft and philanthropy and social and eco- 
nomical reform. Treated in this way ethical treatises 
may be voluminous and luminous as well ; but they 
never can be final, except in their abstractest and 
vaguest features ; and they must more and more 
abandon the old-fashioned, clear-cut, and would-be 
1 scientific ' form. 

V. 

The chief of all the reasons why concrete ethics 
cannot be final is that they have to wait on meta- 
physical and theological beliefs. I said some time 
back that real ethical relations existed in a purely 
human world. They would exist even in what we 
called a moral solitude if the thinker had various 



The Moral Philosopher and Moral Life. 1 1 1 

ideals which took hold of him in turn. His self of 
one day would make demands on his self of another ; 
and some of the demands might be urgent and tyran- 
nical, while others were gentle and easily put aside. 
We call the tyrannical demands imperatives. If we 
ignore these we do not hear the last of it. The good 
which we have wounded returns to plague us with 
interminable crops of consequential damages, com- 
punctions, and regrets. Obligation can thus exist 
inside a single thinker's consciousness ; and perfect 
peace can abide with him only so far as he lives 
according to some sort of a casuistic scale which 
keeps his more imperative goods on top. It is the 
nature of these goods to be cruel to their rivals. 
Nothing shall avail when weighed in the balancf 
against them. They call out all the mercilessness j 
our disposition, arid do not easily forgive us if we, en 
so soft-hearted as to shrink from sacrifice in tld s 
behalf. n _ 

The deepest difference, practically, in the moi e 
life of man is the difference between the easy-goir # 
and the strenuous mood. When in the easy-goinj 
mood the shrinking from present ill is our ruling con- 
sideration. The strenuous mood, on the contrary, 
makes us quite indifferent to present ill, if only the 
greater ideal be attained. The capacity for the stre- 
nuous mood probably lies slumbering in every man, 
but it has more difficulty in some than in others in 
waking up. It needs the wilder passions to arouse it, 
the big fears, loves, and indignations; or else the 
deeply penetrating appeal of some one of the higher 
fidelities, like justice, truth, or freedom. Strong relief 
is a necessity of its vision ; and a world where all the 
mountains are brought down and all the valleys are 



212 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

exalted is no congenial place for its habitation. This 
is why in a solitary thinker this mood might slumber 
on forever without waking. His various ideals, known 
to him to be mere preferences of his own, are too 
nearly of the same denominational value: he can 
play fast or loose with themfat will. This too is why, 
in a merely human world without a God, the appeal 
to our moral energy falls short of its maximal stim- 
ulating power. Life, to be sure, is even in such a 
world a genuinely ethical symphony ; but it is played 
in the compass of a couple of poor octaves, and the 
infinite scale of values fails to open up. Many of us, 
indeed, — like Sir James Stephen in those eloquent 
Essays by a Barrister,' — would openly laugh at the 
ery idea of the strenuous mood being awakened in 
,. by; those claims of remote posterity which consti- 
,. ' the last appeal of the religion of humanity. We 
. lot love these men of the future keenly enough ; 
, i we love them perhaps the less the more we hear 
their evolutionized perfection, their high average 
ngevity and education, their freedom from war and 
rime, their relative immunity from pain and zymotic 
lisease, and all their other negative superiorities. 
This is all too finite, we say; we see too well the 
vacuum beyond. It lacks the note of infinitude and 
mystery, and may all be dealt with in the don't-care 
mood. No need of agonizing ourselves or making 
others agonize for these good creatures just at present. 
When, however, we believe that a God is there, and 
that he is one of the claimants, the infinite perspective 
opens out. The scale of the symphony is incalculably 
prolonged. The more imperative ideals now begin 
to speak with an altogether new objectivity and sig- 
nificance, and to utter the penetrating, shattering, 



The Moral Philosopher and Moral Life. 213 

tragically challenging note of appeal. They ring out 
like the call of Victor Hugo's alpine eagle, " qui parle 
au precipice et que le gouffre entend," and the stre- 
nuous mood awakens at the sound. It saith among 
the trumpets, ha, ha ! it smelleth the battle afar off, 
the thunder of the captains and the shouting. Its 
blood is up ; and cruelty to the lesser claims, so far 
from being a deterrent element, does but add to the 
stern joy with which it leaps to answer to the greater. 
All through history, in the periodical conflicts of 
puritanism with the don't-care temper, we see the 
antagonism of the strenuous and genial moods, and 
the contrast between the ethics of infinite and myste- 
rious obligation from on high, and those of prudence 
and the satisfaction of merely finite need. 

The capacity of the strenuous mood lies so deep 
down among our natural human possibilities that even 
if there were no metaphysical or traditional grounds 
for believing in a God, men would postulate one sim- 
ply as a pretext for living hard, and getting out of the 
game of existence its keenest possibilities of zest. 
Our attitude towards concrete evils is entirely differ- 
ent in a world where we believe there are none but 
finite demanders, from what it is in one where we 
joyously face tragedy for an infinite demander's sake. 
Every sort of energy and endurance, of courage and 
capacity for handling life's evils, is set free in those 
who have religious faith. For this reason the strenu- 
ous type of character will on the battle-field of human 
history always outwear the easy-going type, and reli- 
gion will drive irreligion to the wall. 

It would seem, too, — and this is my final conclu- 
sion, — that the stable and systematic moral universe 



214 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

for which the ethical philosopher asks is fully possible 
tmly in a world where there is a divine thinker with 
all-enveloping demands. If such a thinker existed, 
his way of subordinating the demands to one another 
would be the finally valid casuistic scale ; his claims 
would be the most appealing ; his ideal universe would 
be the most inclusive realizable whole. If he now 
exist, then actualized in his thought already must be 
that ethical philosophy which we seek as the pat- 
tern which our own must evermore approach. 1 In 
the interests of our own ideal of systematically unified 
moral truth, therefore, we, as would-be philosophers, 
must postulate a divine thinker, and pray for the 
victory of the religious cause. Meanwhile, exactly 
what the thought of the infinite thinker may be is 
hidden from us even were we sure of his existence ; 
so that our postulation of him after all serves only to 
let loose in us the strenuous mood. But this is what 
it does in all men, even those who have no interest in 
philosophy. The ethical philosopher, therefore, when- 
ever he ventures to say which course of action is the 
best, is on no essentially different level from the com- 
mon man. " See, I have set before thee this day life 
and good, and death and evil; therefore, choose life 
that thou and thy seed may live," — when this challenge 
comes to us, it is simply our total character and per- 
sonal genius that are on trial ; and if we invoke any 
so-called philosophy, our choice and use of that also 
are but revelations of our personal aptitude or inca- 
pacity for moral life. From this unsparing practical 
ordeal no professor's lectures and no array of books 

1 All this is set forth with great freshness and force in the work 
of my colleague, Professor Josiah Royce : " The Religious Aspect of 
Philosophy." Boston, 1885. 



The Moral Philosopher and Moral Life. 215 

can save us. The solving word, for the learned and 
the unlearned man alike, lies in the last resort in the 
dumb willingnesses and unwillingnesses of their inte- 
rior characters, and nowhere else. It is not in heaven, 
neither is it beyond the sea; but the word is very 
nigh unto thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart, that 
thou mayest do it. 



2i6 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 



GREAT MEN AND THEIR ENVIRONMENT. 1 

A REMARKABLE parallel, which I think has 
never been noticed, obtains between the facts of 
social evolution on the one hand, and of zoological 
evolution as expounded by Mr. Darwin on the other. 
It will be best to prepare the ground for my thesis 
by a few very general remarks on the method of get- 
ting at scientific truth. It is a common platitude that 
a complete acquaintance with any one thing, however 
small, would require a knowledge of the entire uni- 
verse. Not a sparrow falls to the ground but some 
of the remote conditions of his fall are to be found 
in the milky way, in our federal constitution, or in 
the early history of Europe. That is to say, alter the 
milky way, alter the federal constitution, alter the 
facts of our barbarian ancestry, and the universe 
would so far be a different universe from what it now 
is. One fact involved in the difference might be that 
the particular little street-boy who threw the stone 
which brought down the sparrow might not find him- 
self opposite the sparrow at that particular moment; 
or, finding himself there, he might not be in that par- 
ticular serene and disengaged mood of mind which 
expressed itself in throwing the stone. But, true as 
all this is, it would be very foolish for any one who 

1 A lecture before the Harvard Natural History Society; pub- 
lished in the Atlantic Monthly, October, 1880. 



Great Men and their Environment. 217 

was inquiring the cause of the sparrow's fall to over- 
look the boy as too personal, proximate, and so to 
speak anthropomorphic an agent, and to say that the 
true cause is the federal constitution, the westward 
migration of the Celtic race, or the structure of the 
milky way. If we proceeded on that method, we 
might say with perfect legitimacy that a friend of 
ours, who had slipped on the ice upon his door-step 
and cracked his skull, some months after dining with 
thirteen at the table, died because of that ominous 
feast. I know, in fact, one such instance; and I 
might, if I chose, contend with perfect logical propri- 
ety that the slip on the ice was no real accident. 
" There are no accidents," I might say, " for science. 
The whole history of the world converged to produce 
that slip. If anything had been left out, the slip 
would not have occurred just there and then. To say 
it would is to deny the relations of cause and effect 
throughout the universe. The real cause of the death 
was not the slip, but the conditions which engendered 
the slip, — and among them his having sat at a table, 
six months previous, one among thirteen. That is 
truly the reason why he died within the year." 

It will soon be seen whose arguments I am, in form, 
reproducing here. I would fain lay down the truth 
without polemics or recrimination. But unfortunately 
we never fully grasp the import of any true statement 
until we have a clear notion of what the opposite un- 
true statement would be. The error is needed to set 
off the truth, much as a dark background is required 
for exhibiting the brightness of a picture. And the 
error which I am going to use as a foil to set off what 
seems to me the truth of my own statements is con- 
tained in the philosophy of Mr. Herbert Spencer and 



21 8 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

his disciples. Our problem is, What are the causes 
that make communities change from generation to 
generation, — that make the England of Queen Anne 
so different from the England of Elizabeth, the Har- 
vard College of to-day so different from that of thirty 
years ago? 

I shall reply to this problem, The difference is due 
to the accumulated influences of individuals, of their 
examples, their initiatives, and their decisions. The 
Spencerian school replies, The changes are irrespect- 
ive of persons, and independent of individual control. 
They are due to the environment, to the circum- 
stances, the physical geography, the ancestral condi- 
tions, the increasing experience of outer relations; 
to everything, in fact, except the Grants and the Bis- 
marcks, the Joneses and the Smiths. 

Now, I say that these theorizers are guilty of pre- 
cisely the same fallacy as he who should ascribe the 
death of his friend to the dinner with thirteen, or the 
fall of the sparrow to the milky way. Like the dog 
in the fable, who drops his real bone to snatch at its 
image, they drop the real causes to snatch at others, 
which from no possible human point of view are 
available or attainable. Their fallacy is a practical 
one. Let us see where it lies. Although I believe in 
free-will myself, I will waive that belief in this discus- 
sion, and assume with the Spencerians the predes- 
tination of all human actions. On that assumption I 
gladly allow that were the intelligence investigating 
the man's or the sparrow's death omniscient and om- 
nipresent, able to take in the whole of time and space 
at a single glance, there would not be the slightest 
objection to the milky way or the fatal feast being in- 



Great Men and their Environment. 219 

voked among the sought-for causes. Such a divine 
intelligence would see instantaneously all the infinite 
lines of convergence towards a given result, and it 
would, moreover, see impartially: it would see the 
fatal feast to be as much a condition of the sparrow's 
death as of the man's ; it would see the boy with the 
stone to be as much a condition of the man's fall as 
of the sparrow's. 

The human mind, however, is constituted on an 
entirely different plan. It has no such power of uni- 
versal intuition. Its finiteness obliges it to see but 
two or three things at a time. If it wishes to take 
wider sweeps it has to use ' general ideas,' as they are 
called, and in so doing to drop all concrete truths. 
Thus, in the present case, if we as men wish to feel 
the connection between the milky way and the boy 
and the dinner and the sparrow and the man's death, 
we can do so only by falling back on the enormous 
emptiness of what is called an abstract proposition. 
We must say, All things in the world are fatally pre- 
determined, and hang together in the adamantine fix- 
ity of a system of natural law. But in the vagueness 
of this vast proposition we have lost all the concrete 
facts and links ; and in all practical matters the con- 
crete links are the only things of importance. The 
human mind is essentially partial. It can be efficient 
at all only by picking out what to attend to, and ignor- 
ing everything else, — by narrowing its point of view. 
Otherwise, what little strength it has is dispersed, 
and it loses its way altogether. Man always wants 
his curiosity gratified for a particular purpose. If, in 
the case of the sparrow, the purpose is punishment, it 
would be idiotic to wander off from the cats, boys, 
and other possible agencies close by in the street, to 



220 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 






survey the early Celts and the milky way: the boy 
would meanwhile escape. And if, in the case of the 
unfortunate man, we lose ourselves in contemplation 
of the thirteen-at-table mystery, and fail to notice the 
ice on the step and cover it with ashes, some other 
poor fellow, who never dined out in his life, may slip 
on it in coming to the door, and fall and break his 
head too. 

It is, then, a necessity laid upon us as human be- 
ings to limit our view. In mathematics we know how 
this method of ignoring and neglecting quantities 
lying outside of a certain range has been adopted in 
the differential calculus. The calculator throws out 
all the ' infinitesimals ' of the quantities he is consi- 
dering. He treats them (under certain rules) as if 
they did not exist. In themselves they exist perfectly 
all the while ; but they are as if they did not exist for 
the purposes of his calculation. Just so an astrono- 
mer, in dealing with the tidal movements of the ocean, 
takes no account of the waves made by the wind, or by 
the pressure of all the steamers which day and night 
are moving their thousands of tons upon its surface. 
Just so the marksman, in sighting his rifle, allows for 
the motion of the wind, but not for the equally real 
motion of the earth and solar system. Just so- a 
business man's punctuality may overlook an error of 
five minutes, while a physicist, measuring the velocity 
of light, must count each thousandth of a second. 

There are, in short, different cycles of operation in 
nature ; different departments, so to speak, relatively 
independent of one another, so that what goes on at 
any moment in one may be compatible with almost 
any condition of things at the same time in the next. 
The mould on the biscuit in the store-room of a man- 



Great Men and their Environment. 221 

of-war vegetates in absolute indifference to the nation- 
ality of the flag, the direction of the voyage, the 
weather, and the human dramas that may go on on 
board ; and a mycologist may study it in complete 
abstraction from all these larger details. Only by so 
studying it, in fact, is there any chance of the mental 
concentration by which alone he may hope to learn 
something of its nature. On the other hand, the cap- 
tain who in manoeuvring the vessel through a naval 
fight should think it necessary to bring the mouldy 
biscuit into his calculations would very likely lose the 
battle by reason of the excessive ' thoroughness ' of 
his mind. 

The causes which operate in these incommensura- 
ble cycles are connected with one another only if we 
take the whole universe into account. For all lesser 
points of view it is lawful — nay, more, it is for human 
wisdom necessary — to regard them as disconnected 
and irrelevant to one another. 

And this brings us nearer to our special topic. If 
we look at an animal or a human being, distinguished 
from the rest of his kind by the possession of some 
extraordinary peculiarity, good or bad, we shall be 
able to discriminate between the causes which origi- 
nally produced the peculiarity in him and the causes 
that maintain it after it is produced ; and we shall 
see, if the peculiarity be one that he was born with, 
that these two sets of causes belong to two such 
irrelevant cycles. It was the triumphant originality 
of Darwin to see this, and to act accordingly. Sepa- 
rating the causes of production under the title of 
' tendencies to spontaneous variation,' and relegating 
them to a physiological cycle which he forthwith 



222 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

agreed to ignore altogether, 1 he confined his attention 
to the causes of preservation, and under the names of 
natural selection and sexual selection studied them ex- 
clusively as functions of the cycle of the environment. 
Pre-Darwinian philosophers had also tried to estab- 
lish the doctrine of descent with modification; but 
they all committed the blunder of clumping the two 
cycles of causation into one. What preserves an 
animal with his peculiarity, if it be a useful one, they 
saw to be the nature of the environment to which the 
peculiarity was adjusted. The giraffe with his peculiar 
neck is preserved by the fact that there are in his 
environment tall trees whose leaves he can digest. 
But these philosophers went further, and said that the 
presence of the trees not only maintained an animal 
with a long neck to browse upon their branches, but 
also produced him. They made his neck long by 
the constant striving they aroused in him to reach up 
to them. The environment, in short, was supposed 
by these writers to mould the animal by a kind oi 
direct pressure, very much as a seal presses the wax 
into harmony with itself. Numerous instances were 
given of the way in which this goes on under our eyes. 
The exercise of the forge makes the right arm strong, 
the palm grows callous to the oar, the mountain air 
distends the chest, the chased fox grows cunning and 
the chased bird shy, the arctic cold stimulates the 
animal combustion, and so forth. Now these changes, 
of which many more examples might be adduced, are 

1 Darwin's theory of pangenesis is, it is true, an attempt to account 
(among other things) for variation. But it occupies its own separate 
place, and its author no more invokes the environment when he 
talks of the adhesions of gemmules than he invokes these adhesions 
when he talks of the relations of the whole animal to the environ- 
ment Dtiide et impera I 



Great Men and their Environment. 223 

at present distinguished by the special name of adap- 
tive changes. Their peculiarity is that that very 
feature in the environment to which the animal's na- 
ture grows adjusted, itself produces the adjustment. 
The ' inner relation,' to use Mr. Spencer's phrase, 
' corresponds ' with its own efficient cause. 

Darwin's first achievement was to show the utter 
insignificance in amount of these changes produced 
by direct adaptation, the immensely greater mass of 
changes being produced by internal molecular acci- 
dents, of which we know nothing. His next achieve- 
ment was to define the true problem with which we 
have to deal when we study the effects of the visible 
environment on the. animal. That problem is simply 
this : Is the environment more likely to preserve or to 
destroy him, on account of this or that peculiarity 
with which he may be born? In giving the name 'of 
accidental variations ' to those peculiarities with which 
an animal is born, Darwin does not for a moment 
mean to suggest that they are not the fixed outcome 
of natural law. If the total system of the universe be 
taken into account, the causes of these variations and 
the visible environment which preserves or destroys 
them, undoubtedly do, in some remote and round- 
about way, hang together. What Darwin means is, 
that, since that environment is a perfectly known 
thing, and its relations to the organism in the way of 
destruction or preservation are tangible and distinct, 
it would utterly confuse our finite understandings and 
frustrate our hopes of science to mix in with it facts 
from such a disparate and incommensurable cycle as 
that in which the variations are produced. This last 
cycle is that of occurrences before the animal is born. 
It is the cycle of influences upon ova and embryos ; 



224 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

in which lie the causes that tip them and tilt them 
towards masculinity or femininity, towards strength 
or weakness, towards health or disease, and towards 
divergence from the parent type. What are the 
causes there? 

In the first place, they are molecular and invisi- 
ble, — inaccessible, therefore, to direct observation of 
any kind. Secondly, their operations are compatible 
with any social, political, and physical conditions of 
environment. The same parents, living in the same 
environing conditions, may at one birth produce a 
genius, at the next an idiot or a monster. The visi- 
ble external conditions are therefore not direct deter- 
minants of this cycle ; and the more we consider the 
matter, the more we are forced to believe that two 
children of the same parents are made to differ from 
each other by causes as disproportionate to their ulti- 
mate effects as is the famous pebble on the Rocky 
Mountain crest, which separates two rain-drops, to the 
Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Pacific Ocean toward 
which it makes them severally flow. 

The great mechanical distinction between transitive 
forces and discharging forces is nowhere illustrated 
on such a scale as in physiology. Almost all causes 
there are forces of detent, which operate by simply 
unlocking energy already stored up. They are up- 
setters of unstable equilibria, and the resultant effect 
depends infinitely more on the nature of the materials 
upset than on that of the particular stimulus which 
joggles them down. Galvanic work, equal to unity, 
done on a frog's nerve will discharge from the muscle 
to which the nerve belongs mechanical work equal to 
seventy thousand ; and exactly the same muscular 



Great Men and their Environment. 225 

effect will emerge if other irritants than galvanism 
are employed. The irritant has merely started or 
provoked something which then went on of itself, — 
as a match may start a fire which consumes a whole 
town. And qualitatively as well as quantitatively the 
effect may be absolutely incommensurable with the 
cause. We find this condition of things in all organic 
matter. Chemists are distracted by the difficulties 
which the instability of albuminoid compounds op- 
poses to their study. Two specimens, treated in 
what outwardly seem scrupulously identical condi- 
tions, behave in quite different ways. You know 
about the invisible factors of fermentation, and how 
the fate of a jar of milk — whether it turn into a sour 
clot or a mass of koumiss — depends on whether the 
lactic acid ferment or the alcoholic is introduced first, 
and gets ahead of the other in starting the process. 
Now, when the result is the tendency of an ovum, 
itself invisible to the naked eye, to tip towards this 
direction or that in its further evolution, — to bring 
forth a genius or a dunce, even as the rain-drop passes 
east or west of the pebble, — is it not obvious that the 
deflecting cause must lie in a region so recondite and 
minute, must be such a ferment of a ferment, an infinite- 
simal of so high an order, that surmise itself may never 
succeed even in attempting to frame an image of it? 

Such being the case, was not Darwin right to turn 
his back upon that region altogether, and to keep his 
own problem carefully free from all entanglement with 
matters such as these? The success of his work is a 
sufficiently affirmative reply. 

And this brings us at last to the heart of our sub- 
ject. The causes of production of great men lie in a 

15 



226 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

sphere wholly inaccessible to the social philosopher. 
He must simply accept geniuses as data, just as Dar- 
win accepts his spontaneous variations. For him, as 
for Darwin, the only problem is, these data being 
given, How does the environment affect them, and 
how do they affect the environment? Now, I affirm 
that the relation of the visible environment to the 
great man is in the main exactly what it is to the 
' variation ' in the Darwinian philosophy. It chiefly 
adopts or rejects, preserves or destroys, in short selects 
him. 1 And whenever it adopts and preserves the 
great man, it becomes modified by his influence in 
an entirely original and peculiar way. He acts as a 
ferment, and changes its constitution, just as the ad- 
vent of a new zoological species changes the faunal 
and floral equilibrium of the region in which it ap- 
pears. We all recollect Mr. Darwin's famous state- 
ment of the influence of cats on the growth of clover 
in their neighborhood. We all have read of the 
effects of the European rabbit in New Zealand, and 
we have many of us taken part in the controversy 
about the English sparrow here, — whether he kills 
most canker-worms, or drives away most native 
birds. Just so the great man, whether he be an im- 
portation from without like Clive in India or Agassiz 
here, or whether he spring from the soil like Maho- 
met or Franklin, brings about a rearrangement, on 
a large or a small scale, of the pre-existing social 
relations. 



1 It is true that it remodels him, also, to some degree, by its edu- 
cative influence, and that this constitutes a considerable difference 
between the social case and the zoological case. I neglect this aspect 
of the relation here, for the other is the more important. At the end 
of the article I will return to it incidentally. 



Great Men and their Environment. 227 

The mutations of societies, then, from generation 
to generation, are in the main due directly or indi- 
rectly to the acts or the example of individuals whose 
genius was so adapted to the receptivities of the mo- 
ment, or whose accidental position of authority was 
so critical that they became ferments, initiators of 
movement, setters of precedent or fashion, centres of 
corruption, or destroyers of other persons, whose 
gifts, had they had free play, would have led society 
in another direction. 

We see this power of individual initiative exempli- 
fied on a small scale all about us, and on a large 
scale in the case of the leaders of history. It is only 
following the common-sense method of a Lyell, a 
Darwin, and a Whitney to interpret the unknown by 
the known, and reckon up cumulatively the only 
causes of social change we can directly observe. 
Societies of men are just like individuals, in that both 
at any given moment offer ambiguous potentialities 
of development. Whether a young man enters busi- 
ness or the ministry may depend on a decision which 
has to be made before a certain day. He takes the 
place offered in the counting-house, and is committed. 
Little by little, the habits, the knowledges, of the 
other career, which once lay so near, cease to be 
reckoned even among his possibilities. At first, he 
may sometimes doubt whether the self he murdered 
in that decisive hour might not have been the better 
of the two ; but with the years such questions them- 
selves expire, and the old alternative ego, once so 
vivid, fades into something less substantial than a 
dream. It is no otherwise with nations. They may 
be committed by kings and ministers to peace or war, 
by generals to victory or defeat, by prophets to this 



228 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

religion or to that, by various geniuses to fame in art, 
science, or industry. A war is a true point of bifur- 
cation of future possibilities. Whether it fail or suc- 
ceed, its declaration must be the starting-point of new- 
policies. Just so does a revolution, or any great civic 
precedent, become a deflecting influence, whose opera- 
tions widen with the course of time. Communities 
obey their ideals ; and an accidental success fixes an 
ideal, as an accidental failure blights it. 

Would England have to-day the ' imperial ' ideal 
which she now has, if a certain boy named Bob Clive 
had shot himself, as he tried to do, at Madras ? Would 
she be the drifting raft she is now in European affairs x 
if a Frederic the Great had inherited her throne 
instead of a Victoria, and if Messrs. Bentham, Mill, 
Cobden, and Bright had all been born in Prussia? 
England has, no doubt, to-day precisely the same 
intrinsic value relatively to the other nations that she 
ever had. There is no such fine accumulation of 
human material upon the globe. But in England the 
material has lost effective form, while in Germany it 
has found it. Leaders give the form. Would Eng* 
land be crying forward and backward at once, as she 
does now, ' letting I will not wait upon I would,' 
wishing to conquer but not to fight, if her ideal had 
in all these years been fixed by a succession of states- 
men of supremely commanding personality, working 
in one direction? Certainly not. She would have 
espoused, for better or worse, either one course or 
another. Had Bismarck died in his cradle, the Ger- 
mans would still be satisfied with appearing to them- 
selves as a race of spectacled Gelehrten and political 
herbivora, and to the French as ces bons> or ces naifs t 
1 The reader will remember when this was written. 



Great Men and their Environment. 229 

Alletnands. Bismarck's will showed them, to then 
own great astonishment, that they could play a far 
livelier game. The lesson will not be forgotten. 
Germany may have many vicissitudes, but they — 

" will never do away, I ween, 
The marks of that which once hath been " — 

of Bismarck's initiative, namely, from i860 to 1873. 

The fermentative influence of geniuses must be 
admitted as, at any rate, one factor in the changes 
that constitute social evolution. The community 
may evolve in many ways. The accidental presence 
of this or that ferment decides in which way it shall 
evolve. Why, the very birds of the forest, the par- 
rot, the mino, have the power of human speech, but 
never develop it of themselves; some one must be 
there to teac) fbem. So with us individuals. Rem- 
brandt must te«.ch us to enjoy the struggle of light 
with darkness, Wagner to enjoy peculiar musical 
effects ; Dickens gives a twist to our sentimentality, 
Artemus Ward to our humor; Emerson kindles a 
new moral light within us. But it is like Columbus's 
egg. " All can raise the flowers now, for all have got 
the seed." But if this be true of the individuals in 
the community, how can it be false of the community 
as a whole? If shown a certain way, a community 
may take it; if not, it will never find it. And the 
ways are to a large extent indeterminate in advance. 
A nation may obey either of many alternative im- 
pulses given by different men of genius, and still live 
and be prosperous, just as a man may enter either o{ 
many businesses. Only, the prosperities may differ in 
their type. 

But the indeterminism is not absolute. Not every 



230 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

' man ' fits every ' hour.' Sortie incompatibilities there 
are. A given genius may come either too early or 
too late. Peter the Hermit would now be sent to a 
lunatic asylum. John Mill in the tenth century 
would have lived and died unknown. Cromwell and 
Napoleon need their revolutions, Grant his civil war. 
An Ajax gets no fame in the day of telescopic-sighted 
rifles; and, to express differently an instance which 
Spencer uses, what could a Watt have effected in a 
tribe which no precursive genius had taught to smelt 
iron or to turn a lathe? 

Now, the important thing to notice is that what 
makes a certain genius now incompatible with his 
surroundings is usually the fact that some previous 
genius of a different strain has warped the community 
away from the sphere of his possible effectiveness. 
After Voltaire, no Peter the Hermit; after Charles 
IX. and Louis XIV., no general protestantization of 
France; after a Manchester school, a Beaconsfield's 
success is transient; after a Philip II., a Castelar 
makes little headway ; and so on. Each bifurcation 
cuts off certain sides of the field altogether, and limits 
the future possible angles of deflection. A commu- 
nity is a living thing, and in words which I can do no 
better than quote from Professor Clifford, 1 " it is the 
peculiarity of living things not merely that they 
change under the influence of surrounding circum- 
stances, but that any change which takes place in 
them is not lost but retained, and as it were built into 
the organism to serve as the foundation for future 
actions. If you cause any distortion in the growth 
of a tree and make it crooked, whatever you may do 
afterwards to make the tree straight the mark of your 

1 Lectures and Essays, i. 82. 



Great Men and their Environment. 231 

distortion is there ; it is absolutely indelible ; it has 
become part of the tree's nature. . . . Suppose, how- 
ever, that you take a lump of gold, melt it, and let it 
cool. . . . No one can tell by examining a piece of 
gold how often it has been melted and cooled in geo- 
logic ages, or even in the last year by the hand of 
man. Any one who cuts down an oak can tell by the 
rings in its trunk how many times winter has frozen it 
into widowhood, and how many times summer has 
warmed it into life. A living being must always con- 
tain within itself the history, not merely of its own 
existence, but of all its ancestors." 

Every painter can tell us how each added line 
deflects his picture in a certain sense. Whatever 
lines follow must be built on those first laid down. 
Every author who starts to rewrite a piece of work 
knows how impossible it becomes to use any of the 
first- v written pages again. The new beginning has 
already excluded the possibility of those earlier 
phrases and transitions, while it has at the same 
time created the possibility of an indefinite set of 
new ones, no one of which, however, is completely 
determined in advance. Just so the social surround- 
ings of the past and present hour exclude the 
possibility of accepting certain contributions from 
individuals ; but they do not positively define what 
contributions shall be accepted, for in themselves 
they are powerless to fix what the nature of the 
individual offerings shall be. 1 

1 Mr. Grant Allen himself, in an article from which I shall pres- 
ently quote, admits that a set of people who, if they had been exposed 
ages ago to the geographical agencies of Timbuctoo, would have 
developed into negroes might now, after a protracted exposure to the 
conditions of Hamburg, never become negroes if transplanted to 
Timbuctoo. 



232 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 



Thus social evolution is a resultant of the inter- 
action of two wholly distinct factors, — the individual, 
deriving his peculiar gifts from the play of physiolog- 
ical and infra-social forces, but bearing all the power 
of initiative and origination in his hands ; and, second, 
the social environment, with its power of adopting or 
rejecting both him and his gifts. Both factors are 
essential to change. The community stagnates with- 
out the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies 
away without the sympathy of the community. 

All this seems nothing more than common-sense. 
All who wish to see it developed by a man of genius 
should read that golden little work, Bagehot's Physics 
and Politics, in which (it seems to me) the complete 
sense of the way in which concrete things grow and 
change is as livingly present as the straining after a 
pseudo-philosophy of evolution is livingly absent. 
But there are never wanting minds to whom such 
views seem personal and contracted, and allied to an 
anthropomorphism long exploded in other fields of 
knowledge. " The individual withers, and the world 
is more and more," to these writers ; and in a Buckle, 
a Draper, and a Taine we all know how much the 
' world ' has come to be almost synonymous with 
the climate. We all know, too, how the controversy 
has been kept up between the partisans of a ' science 
of history ' and those who deny the existence of any- 
thing like necessary ' laws ' where human societies 
are concerned. Mr. Spencer, at the opening of his 
Study of Sociology, makes an onslaught on the 
1 great-man theory ' of history, from which a few 
passages may be quoted : — 

''The genesis of societies by the action of great men 
may be comfortably believed so long as, resting in general 



. 



Great Men and their Environment. 233 

notions, you do not ask for particulars. But now, if, dis- 
satisfied with vagueness, we demand that our ideas shall be 
brought into focus and exactly defined, we discover the 
hypothesis to be utterly incoherent. If, not stopping at 
the explanation of social progress as due to the great man, 
we go back a step, and ask, Whence comes the great man? 
we find that the theory breaks down completely. The 
question has two conceivable answers : his origin is super- 
natural, or it is natural. Is his origin supernatural? Then 
he is a deputy god, and we have theocracy once removed, 
— or, rather, not removed at all. ... Is this an unaccept- 
able solution ? Then the origin of the great man is natural ; 
and immediately this is recognized, he must be classed 
with all other phenomena in the society that gave him birth 
as a product of its antecedents. Along with the whole 
generation of which he forms a minute part, along with its 
institutions, language, knowledge, manners, and its multi- 
tudinous arts and appliances, he is a resultant. . . . You 
must admit that the genesis of the great man depends on 
the long series of complex influences which has produced 
the race in which he appears, and the social state into 
which that race has slowly grown. . . . Before he can 
remake his society, his society must make him. All those 
changes of which he is the proximate initiator have their 
chief causes in the generations he descended from. If 
there is to be anything like a real explanation of those 
changes, it must be sought in that aggregate of conditions 
out of which both he and they have arisen." * 

Now, it seems to me that there is something which 
one might almost call impudent in the attempt which 
Mr. Spencer makes, in the first sentence of this ex- 
tract, to pin the reproach of vagueness upon those 
who believe in the power of initiative of the great 
man. 

1 Study of Sociology, pages 33-35. 



234 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 



Suppose I say that the singular moderation which 
now distinguishes social, political, and religious dis- 
cussion in England, and contrasts so strongly with 
the bigotry and dogmatism of sixty years ago, is 
largely due to J. S. Mill's example. I may possibly 
be wrong about the facts; but I am, at any rate, 
' asking for particulars,' and not ' resting in general 
notions.' And if Mr. Spencer should tell me it 
started from no personal influence whatever, but from 
the ' aggregate of conditions,' the ' generations,' Mill 
and all his contemporaries ' descended from,' the 
whole past order of nature in short, surely he, not I, 
would be the person ' satisfied with vagueness.' 

The fact is that Mr. Spencer's sociological method 
is identical with that of one who would invoke the 
zodiac to account for the fall of the sparrow, and the 
thirteen at table to explain the gentleman's death. 
It is of little more scientific value than the Oriental 
method of replying to whatever question arises by the 
unimpeachable truism, " God is great." Not to fall 
back on the gods, where a proximate principle may 
be found, has with us Westerners long since become 
the sign of an efficient as distinguished from an inef- 
ficient intellect. 

To believe that the cause of everything is to be 
found in its antecedents is the starting-point, the in- 
itial postulate, not the goal and consummation, of 
science. If she is simply to lead us out of the laby- 
rinth by the same hole we went in by three or four 
thousand years ago, it seems hardly worth while to 
have followed her through the darkness at all. If 
anything is humanly certain it is that the great man's 
society, properly so called, does not make him before 
he can remake it. Physiological forces, with which 



ch 



Great Men and their Environment. 235 

the social, political, geographical, and to a great 
extent anthropological conditions have just as much 
and just as little to do as the condition of the crater 
of Vesuvius has to do with the flickering of this gas by 
which I write, are what make him. Can it be that Mr. 
Spencer holds the convergence of sociological pres- 
sures to have so impinged on Stratford-upon-Avon 
about the 26th of April, 1564, that a W. Shakespeare, 
with all his mental peculiarities, had to be born there, 
— as the pressure of water outside a certain boat will 
cause a stream of a certain form to ooze into a par- 
ticular leak? And does he mean to say that if the 
aforesaid W. Shakespeare had died of cholera infan- 
tum, another mother at Stratford-upon-Avon would 
needs have engendered a duplicate copy of him, to 
restore the sociologic equilibrium, — just as the same 
stream of water will reappear, no matter how often 
you pass a sponge over the leak, so long as the out- 
side level remains unchanged? Or might the substi- 
tute arise at ' Stratford-atte-Bowe ' ? Here, as else- 
where, it is very hard, in the midst of Mr. Spencer's 
vagueness, to tell what he does mean at all. 

We have, however, in his disciple, Mr. Grant Allen, 
one who leaves us in no doubt whatever of his precise 
meaning. This widely informed, suggestive, and bril- 
liant writer published last year a couple of articles in 
the Gentleman's Magazine, in which he maintained that 
individuals have no initiative in determining social 
change. 

"The differences between one nation and another, 
whether in intellect, commerce, art, morals, or general tem- 
perament, ultimately depend, not upon any mysterious 
properties of race, nationality, or any other unknown and 
unintelligible abstractions, but simply and solely upon the 



136 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

physical circumstances to which they are exposed. If it 
be a fact, as we know it to be, that the French nation dif- 
fers recognizably from the Chinese, and the people of 
Hamburg differ recognizably from the people of Timbuctoo, 
then the notorious and conspicuous differences between 
them are wholly due to the geographical position of the 
various races. If the people who went to Hamburg had 
gone to Timbuctoo, they would now be indistinguishable 
from the semi-barbarian negroes who inhabit that central 
African metropolis ; * and if the people who went to Tim- 
buctoo had gone to Hamburg, they would now have been 
white- skinned merchants driving a roaring trade in imi- 
tation sherry and indigestible port. . . . The differentia- 
ting agency must be sought in the great permament 
geographical features of land and sea; . . . these have 
necessarily and inevitably moulded the characters and histo- 
ries of every nation upon the earth. . . . We cannot regard 
any nation as an active agent in differentiating itself. Only 
the surrounding circumstances can have any effect in such 
a direction. [These two sentences dogmatically deny the 
existence of the relatively independent physiological cycle 
of causation.] To suppose otherwise is to suppose that 
the mind of man is exempt from the universal law of caus- 
ation. There is no caprice, no spontaneous impulse, in 
human endeavors. Even tastes and inclinations must them- 
selves be the result of surrounding causes." 2 

1 No ! not even though they were bodily brothers ! The geo- 
graphical factor utterly vanishes before the ancestral factor. The 
difference between Hamburg and Timbuctoo as a cause of ultimate 
divergence of two races is as nothing to the difference of consti- 
tution of the ancestors of the two races, even though as in twin 
brothers, this difference might be invisible to the naked eye. No 
two couples of the most homogeneous race could possibly be found 
so identical as, if set in identical environments, to give rise to two 
identical lineages. The minute divergence at the start grows broader 
with each generation, and ends with entirely dissimilar breeds. 

2 Article ' Nation Making,' in Gentleman's Magazine, 1878. 1 



Great Men and their Environment 237 

Elsewhere Mr. Allen, writing of the Greek culture, 
says : — 

" It was absolutely and unreservedly the product of the 
geographical Hellas, acting upon the given factor of the 
undifferentiated Aryan brain. ... To me it seems a self- 
evident proposition that nothing whatsoever can differentiate 
one body of men from another, except the physical con- 
ditions in which they are set, — including, of course, under 
the term physical conditions the relations of place and time 
in which they stand with regard to other bodies of men. 
To suppose otherwise is to deny the primordial law of 
causation. To imagine that the mind can differentiate itself 
is to imagine that it can be differentiated without a cause." x 

This outcry about the law of universal causation 
being undone, the moment we refuse to invest in 
the kind of causation which is peddled round by 
a particular school, makes one impatient. These 
writers have no imagination of alternatives. With 
them there is no tertium quid between outward envi- 
ronment and miracle. Aut Ccesar, aut nullus! Aut 
Spencerism, aut catechism ! 

If by ' physical conditions ' Mr. Allen means what 
he does mean, the outward cycle of visible nature 
and man, his assertion is simply physiologically false. 
For a national mind differentiates ' itself whenever 
a genius is born in its midst by causes acting in 
the invisible and molecular cycle. But if Mr. Allen 
means by ' physical conditions ' the whole of nature, 
his assertion, though true, forms but the vague Asiatic 

quote from the reprint in the Popular Science Monthly Supplement, 
December, 1878, pages 121, 123, 126. 

1 Article ' Hellas,' in Gentleman's Magazine, 1878. Reprint in 
Popular Science Monthly Supplement, September, 1878. 



238 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

profession of belief in an all-enveloping fate, which 
certainly need not plume itself on any specially 
advanced or scientific character. 

And how can a thinker so clever as Mr. Allen fail 
to have distinguished in these matters between neces- 
sary conditions and sufficient conditions of a given 
result? The French say that to have an omelet we 
must break our eggs ; that is, the breaking of eggs 
is a necessary condition of the omelet. But is it a 
sufficient condition? Does an omelet appear when- 
ever three eggs are broken? So of the Greek mind. 
To get such versatile intelligence it may be that such 
commercial dealings with the world as the geograph- 
ical Hellas afforded are a necessary condition. But 
if they are a sufficient condition, why did not the 
Phoenicians outstrip the Greeks in intelligence? No 
geographical environment can produce a given type 
of mind. It can only foster and further certain 
types fortuitously produced, and thwart and frustrate 
others. Once again, its function is simply selective, 
and determines what shall actually be only by de- 
stroying what is positively incompatible. An Arc- 
tic environment is incompatible with improvident 
habits in its denizens ; but whether the inhabitants 
of such a region shall unite with their thrift the 
peacefulness of the Eskimo or the pugnacity of the 
Norseman is, so far as the climate is concerned, an 
accident. Evolutionists should not forget that we 
all have five fingers not because four or six would 
not do just as well, but merely because the first verte- 
brate above the fishes happened to have that number. 
He owed his prodigious success in founding a line of 
descent to some entirely other quality, — we know 



Great Men and their Environment. 239 

not which, — but the inessential five fingers were 
taken in tow and preserved to the present day. So 
of most social peculiarities. Which of them shall be 
taken in tow by the few qualities which the environ- 
ment necessarily exacts is a matter of what physio- 
logical accidents shall happen among individuals. 
Mr. Allen promises to prove his thesis in detail by 
the examples of China, India, England, Rome, etc. I 
have not the smallest hesitation in predicting that he 
will do no more with these examples than he has 
done with Hellas. He will appear upon the scene 
after the fact, and show that the quality developed 
by each race was, naturally enough, not incompatible 
with its habitat. But he will utterly fail to show that 
the particular form of compatibility fallen into in each 
case was the one necessary and only possible form. 

Naturalists know well enough how indeterminate the 
harmonies between a fauna and its environment are. 
An animal may better his chances of existence in 
either of many ways, — growing aquatic, arboreal, or 
subterranean ; small and swift, or massive and bulky ; 
spiny, horny, slimy, or venomous; more timid or 
more pugnacious ; more cunning or more fertile of 
offspring; more gregarious or more solitary; or in 
other ways besides, — and any one of these ways may 
suit him to many widely different environments. 

Readers of Mr. A. R. Wallace will well remember 
the striking illustrations of this in his Malay Archi- 
pelago : — 

" Borneo closely resembles New Guinea not only in its 
vast size and its freedom from volcanoes, but in its variety 
of geological structure, its uniformity of climate, and the 
general aspect of the forest vegetation that clothes its sur- 
face ; the Moluccas are the counterpart of the Philippines 



240 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

in their volcanic structure, their extreme fertility, theii 
luxuriant forests, and their frequent earthquakes; and 
Bali, with the east end of Java, has a climate almost as 
dry and a soil almost as arid as that of Timor. Yet be- 
tween these corresponding groups of islands, constructed, 
as it were, after the same pattern, subjected to the same 
climate, and bathed by the same oceans, there exists the 
greatest possible contrast when we compare their animal 
productions. Nowhere does the ancient doctrine that 
differences or similarities in the various forms of life that 
inhabit different countries are due to corresponding physi- 
cal differences or similarities in the countries themselves, 
meet with so direct and palpable a contradiction. Borneo 
and New Guinea, as alike physically as two distinct coun- 
tries can be, are zoologically wide as the poles asunder; 
while Australia, with its dry winds, its open plains, its stony 
deserts, and its temperate climate, yet produces birds and 
quadrupeds which are closely related to those inhabiting 
the hot, damp, luxuriant forests which everywhere clothe 
the plains and mountains of New Guinea." 

Here we have similar physical-geography environ- 
ments harmonizing with widely differing animal lives, 
and similar animal lives harmonizing with widely 
differing geographical environments. A singularly 
accomplished writer, E. Gryzanowski, in the North 
American Review, 1 uses the instances of Sardinia and 
Corsica in support of this thesis with great effect. 
He says : — 

"These sister islands, lying in the very centre of the 
Mediterranean, at almost equal distances from the centres 
of Latin and Neo-Latin civilization, within easy reach of 
the Phoenician, the Greek, and the Saracen, with a coast- 

l Vol. cxiii. p. 318 (October, 1871). 



Great Men and their Environment. 241 

line of more than a thousand miles, endowed with obvious 
and tempting advantages, and hiding untold sources of 
agricultural and mineral wealth, have nevertheless remained 
unknown, unheeded, and certainly uncared for during the 
thirty centuries of European history. . . . These islands 
have dialects, but no language ; records of battles, but no 
history. They have customs, but no laws ; the vendetta, 
but no justice. They have wants and wealth, but no com- 
merce ; timber and ports, but no shipping. They have le- 
gends, but no poetry \ beauty, but no art ; and twenty years 
ago it could still be said that they had universities, but 
no students. . . . That Sardinia, with all her emotional 
and picturesque barbarism, has never produced a single 
artist is almost as strange as her barbarism itself. . . . 
Near the focus of European civilization, in the very spot 
which an a priori geographer would point out as the most 
favorable place for material and intellectual, commercial, 
and political development, these strange sister islands 
have slept their secular sleep, like nodes on the sounding- 
board of history." 

This writer then goes on to compare Sardinia and 
Sicily with some detail. All the material advantages 
are in favor of Sardinia, " and the Sardinian popula- 
tion, being of an ancestry more mixed than that of 
the English race, would justify far higher expecta- 
tions than that of Sicily." Yet Sicily's past history 
has been brilliant in the extreme, and her commerce 
to-day is great. Dr. Gryzanowiski has his own 
theory of the historic torpor of these favored isles. 
He thinks they stagnated because they never gained 
political autonomy, being always owned by some 
Continental power. I will not dispute the theory; 
but I will ask, Why did they not gain it? and answer 
immediately: Simply because no individuals were 

16 



242 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

born there with patriotism and ability enough to 
inflame their countrymen with national pride, ambi- 
tion, and thirst for independent life. Corsicans and 
Sardinians are probably as good stuff as any of their 
neighbors. But the best wood-pile will not blaze 
till a torch is applied, and the appropriate torches 
seem to have been wanting. 1 

Sporadic great men come everywhere. But for a 
community to get vibrating through and through 



1 I am well aware that in much that follows (though in nothing 
that precedes) I seem to be crossing the heavily shotted bows of 
Mr. Galton, for whose laborious investigations into the heredity of 
genius I have the greatest respect. Mr. Galton inclines to think 
that genius of intellect and passion is bound to express itself, what- 
ever the outward opportunity, and that within any given race an 
equal number of geniuses of each grade must needs be born in every 
equal period of time ; a subordinate race cannot possibly engender 
a large number of high-class geniuses, etc. He would, I suspect, 
infer the suppositions I go on to make — of great men fortuitously 
assembling around a given epoch and making it great, and of their 
being fortuitously absent from certain places and times (from Sar- 
dinia, from Boston now, etc.) — to be radically vicious. I hardly 
think, however, that he does justice to the great complexity of the 
conditions of effective greatness, and to the way in which the physio- 
logical averages of production may be masked entirely during long 
periods, either by the accidental mortality of geniuses in infancy, or 
by the fact that the particular geniuses born happened not to find 
tasks. I doubt the truth of his assertion that intellectual genius, like 
murder, 'will out.' It is true that certain types are irrepressible. 
Voltaire, Shelley, Carlyle, can hardly be conceived leading a dumb 
and vegetative life in any epoch. But take Mr. Galton himself, take 
his cousin Mr. Darwin, and take Mr. Spencer : nothing is to me more 
conceivable than that at another epoch all three of these men might 
have died ' with all their music in them,' known only to their friends 
as persons of strong and original character and judgment. What has 
started them on their career of effective greatness is simply the 
accident of each stumbling upon a task vast, brilliant, and con- 
genial enough to call out the convergence of all his passions and pow- 
ers. I see no more reason why, in case they had not fallen in with 
their several hobbies at propitious periods in their life, they need 



Great Men and their Environment. 243 

with intensely active life, many geniuses coming 
together and in rapid succession are required. This 
is why great epochs are so rare, — why the sudden 
bloom of a Greece, an early Rome, a Renaissance, is 
such a mystery. Blow must follow blow so fast that 
no cooling can occur in the intervals. Then the 
mass of the nation grows incandescent, and may 
continue to glow by pure inertia long after the 
originators of its internal movement have passed 
away. We often hear surprise expressed that in 
these high tides of human affairs not only the people 
should be filled with stronger life, but that individual 
geniuses should seem so exceptionally abundant. 
This mystery is just about as deep as the time-hon- 
ored conundrum as to why great rivers flow by great 
towns. It is true that great public fermentations 
awaken and adopt many geniuses, who in more 
torpid times would have had no chance to work. 
But over and above this there must be an excep- 
tional concourse of genius about a time, to make 
the fermentation begin at all. The unlikeliness of 
the concourse is far greater than the unlikeliness of 
any particular genius ; hence the rarity of these pe- 
riods and the exceptional aspect which they always 
wear. 

necessarily have hit upon other hobbies, and made themselves 
equally great. Their case seems similar to that of the Washing- 
tons, Cromwells, and Grants, who simply rose to their occasions. 
But apart from these causes of fallacy, I am strongly disposed to 
think that where transcendent geniuses are concerned the num- 
bers anyhow are so small that their appearance will not fit into 
any scheme of averages. That is, two or three might appear to- 
gether, just as the two or three balls nearest the target centre 
might be fired consecutively. Take longer epochs and more 
firing, and the great geniuses and near balls would on the whole 
be more spread out. 



244 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

It is folly, then, to speak of the 'laws of history 9 
as of something inevitable, which science has only to 
discover, and whose consequences any one can then 
foretell but do nothing to alter or avert. Why, the 
very laws of physics are conditional, and deal with 
ifs. The physicist does not say, " The water will 
boil anyhow ; " he only says it will boil if a fire be kin- 
dled beneath it. And so the utmost the student of 
sociology can ever predict is that if a genius of a 
certain sort show the way, society will be sure to fol- 
low. It might long ago have been predicted with 
great confidence that both Italy and Germany would 
reach a stable unity if some one could but succeed in 
starting the process. It could not have been pre- 
dicted, however, that the modus operandi in each case 
would be subordination to a paramount state rather 
than federation, because no historian could have cal- 
culated the freaks of birth and fortune which gave at 
the same moment such positions of authority to three 
such peculiar individuals as Napoleon III., Bismarck, 
and Cavour. So of our own politics. It is certain 
now that the movement of the independents, reform- 
ers, or whatever one please to call them, will triumph. 
But whether it do so by converting the Republican 
party to its ends, or by rearing a new party on the 
ruins of both our present factions, the historian can- 
not say. There can be no doubt that the reform 
movement would make more progress in one year 
with an adequate personal leader than as now in ten 
without one. Were there a great citizen, splendid 
with every civic gift, to be its candidate, who can doubt 
that he would lead us to victory? But, at present, 
we, his environment, who sigh for him and would so 
gladly preserve and adopt him if he came, can neither 



Great Men and their Environment. 245 

move without him, nor yet do anything to bring him 
forth. 1 

To conclude : The evolutionary view of history, 
when it denies the vital importance of individual initi- 
ative, is, then, an utterly vague and unscientific con- 
ception, a lapse from modern scientific determinism 
into the most ancient oriental fatalism. The lesson of 
the analysis that we have made (even on the com- 
pletely deterministic hypothesis with which we started) 
forms an appeal of the most stimulating sort to the 
energy of the individual. Even the dogged resistance 
of the reactionary conservative to changes which he 
cannot hope entirely to defeat is justified and shown 
to be effective. He retards the movement; deflects 
it a little by the concessions he extracts ; gives it a re- 
sultant momentum, compounded of his inertia and his 
adversaries' speed ; and keeps up, in short, a constant 
lateral pressure, which, to be sure, never heads it round 
about, but brings it up at last at a goal far to the right 
or left of that to which it would have drifted had he 
allowed it to drift alone. 

I now pass to the last division of my subject, the 
function of the environment in mental evolution. After 
what I have already said, I may be quite concise. 
Here, if anywhere, it would seem at first sight as if that 
school must be right which makes the mind passively 
plastic, and the environment actively productive of 
the form and order of its conceptions ; which, in a 
word, thinks that all mental progress must result from 

1 Since this paper was written, President Cleveland has to a cer- 
tain extent met the need. But who can doubt that if he had certain 
other qualities which he has not yet shown, his influence would have 
been still more decisive? (1896.) 



246 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

a series of adaptive changes, in the sense already de- 
fined of that word. We know what a vast part of our 
mental furniture consists of purely remembered, not 
reasoned, experience. The entire field of our habits 
and associations by contiguity belongs here. The 
entire field of those abstract conceptions which were 
taught us with the language into which we were born 
belongs here also. And, more than this, there is rea- 
son to think that the order of ' outer relations ' expe- 
rienced by the individual may itself determine the or- 
der in which the general characters imbedded therein 
shall be noticed and extracted by his mind. 1 The 
pleasures and benefits, moreover, which certain parts 
of the environment yield, and the pains and hurts 
which other parts inflict, determine the direction of 
our interest and our attention, and so decide at which 
points the accumulation of mental experiences shall 
begin. It might, accordingly, seem as if there were 
no room for any other agency than this ; as if the dis- 
tinction we have found so useful between ' spontane- 
ous variation/ as the producer of changed forms, and 
the environment, as their preserver and destroyer, 
did not hold in the case of mental progress ; as if, in 
a word, the parallel with darwinism might no longer 
obtain, and Spencer might be quite right with his 
fundamental law of intelligence, which says, "The 
cohesion between psychical states is proportionate to 
the frequency with which the relation between the 
answering external pheonmena has been repeated in 
experience." 2 

1 That is, if a certain general character be rapidly repeated in our 
outer experience with a number of strongly contrasted concomitants, 
it will be sooner abstracted than if its associates are invariable or 
monotonous. 

2 Principles of Psychology, i. 460. See also pp. 463, 464, 500. On 



Great Men and their Environment. 247 

But, in spite of all these facts, I have no hesitation 
whatever in holding firm to the darwinian distinction 
even here. I maintain that the facts in question are 
all drawn from the lower strata of the mind, so to 
speak, — from the sphere of its least evolved functions, 
from the region of intelligence which man possesses 
in common with the brutes. And I can easily show 
that throughout the whole extent of those mental de- 
partments which are highest, which are most charac- 
teristically human, Spencer's law is violated at every 
step ; and that as a matter of fact the new concep- 
tions, emotions, and active tendencies which evolve 
are originally produced in the shape of random im- 
ages, fancies, accidental out-births of spontaneous va- 
riation in the functional activity of the excessively 
instable human brain, which the outer environment 
simply confirms or refutes, adopts or rejects, preserves 
or destroys, — selects, in short, just as it selects mor- 
phological and social variations due to molecular acci- 
dents of an analogous sort. 

It is one of the tritest of truisms that human intelli- 
gences of a simple order are very literal. They are 
slaves of habit, doing what they have been taught 
without variation ; dry, prosaic, and matter-of-fact in 
their remarks ; devoid of humor, except of the coarse 
physical kind which rejoices in a practical joke ; tak- 
ing the world for granted ; and possessing in their 
faithfulness and honesty the single gift by which they 
are sometimes able to warm us into admiration. But 



page 408 the law is formulated thus : The persistence of the con- 
nection in consciousness is proportionate to the persistence of the 
outer connection. Mr. Spencer works most with the law of frequency. 
Either law, from my point of view, is false ; but Mr. Spencer ought 
not to think them synonymous. 



248 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

even this faithfulness seems to have a sort of inorganic 
ring, and to remind us more of the immutable proper- 
ties of a piece of inanimate matter than of the stead- 
fastness of a human will capable of alternative choice. 
When we descend to the brutes, all these peculiarities 
are intensified. No reader of Schopenhauer can for- 
get his frequent allusions to the trockener ernst of dogs 
and horses, nor to their ehrlichkeit. And every no- 
ticer of their ways must receive a deep impression of 
the fatally literal character of the few, simple, and 
treadmill-like operations of their minds. 

But turn to the highest order of minds, and what a 
change ! Instead of thoughts of concrete things pa- 
tiently following one another in a beaten track of ha- 
bitual suggestion, we have the most abrupt cross-cuts 
and transitions from one idea to another, the most 
rarefied abstractions and discriminations, the most 
unheard-of combinations of elements, the subtlest 
associations of analogy ; in a word, we seem suddenly 
introduced into a seething caldron of ideas, where 
everything is fizzling and bobbing about in a state of 
bewildering activity, where partnerships can be joined 
or loosened in an instant, treadmill routine is unknown, 
and the unexpected seems the only law. Accord- 
ing to the idiosyncrasy of the individual, the scintil- 
lations will have one character or another. They will 
be sallies of wit and humor ; they will be flashes of 
poetry and eloquence ; they will be constructions of 
dramatic fiction or of mechanical device, logical or 
philosophic abstractions, business projects, or scien- 
tific hypotheses, with trains of experimental conse- 
quences based thereon ; they will be musical sounds, 
or images of plastic beauty or picturesqueness, or vis- 
ions of moral harmony. But, whatever their differ- 



Great Men and their Environment. 249 

ences may be, they will all agree in this, — that their 
genesis is sudden and, as it were, spontaneous. That 
is to say, the same premises would not, in the mind of 
another individual, have engendered just that conclu- 
sion ; although, when the conclusion is offered to the 
other individual, he may thoroughly accept and enjoy 
it, and envy the brilliancy of him to whom it first 
occurred. 

To Professor Jevons is due the great credit of hav- 
ing emphatically pointed out 1 how the genius of dis- 
covery depends altogether on the number of these 
random notions and guesses which visit the investi- 
gator's mind. To be fertile in hypotheses is the first 
requisite, and to be willing to throw them away the 
moment experience contradicts them is the next. The 
Baconian method of collating tables of instances may 
be a useful aid at certain times. But one might as 
well expect a chemist's note-book to write down the 
name of the body analyzed, or a weather table to sum 
itself up into a prediction of probabilities of its own 
accord, as to hope that the mere fact of mental con- 
frontation with a certain series of facts will be suffi- 
cient to make a?iy brain conceive their law. The con- 
ceiving of the law is a spontaneous variation in the 
strictest sense of the term. It flashes out of one brain, 
and no other, because the instability of that brain is 
such as to tip and upset itself in just that particular 
direction. But the important thing to notice is that 
the good flashes and the bad flashes, the triumphant 
hypotheses and the absurd conceits, are on an exact 
equality in respect of their origin. Aristotle's absurd 
Physics and his immortal Logic flow from one source : 
the forces that produce the one produce the other. 

1 In his Principles of Science, chapters xi. xii. xxvi. 



2.50 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

When walking along the street, thinking of the blue 
sky or the fine spring weather, I may either smile at 
some grotesque whim which occurs to me, or I may 
suddenly catch an intuition of the solution of a long- 
unsolved problem, which at that moment was far 
from my thoughts. Both notions are shaken out of 
the same reservoir, — the reservoir of a brain in which 
the reproduction of images in the relations of their 
outward persistence or frequency has long ceased to 
be the dominant law. But to the thought, when it is 
once engendered, the consecration of agreement with 
outward relations may come. The conceit perishes 
in a moment, and is forgotten. The scientific hypoth- 
esis arouses in me a fever of desire for verification. I 
read, write, experiment, consult experts. Everything 
corroborates my notion, which being then published 
in a book spreads from review to review and from 
mouth to mouth, till at last there is no doubt I am 
enshrined in the Pantheon of the great diviners of 
nature's ways. The environment preserves the con- 
ception which it was unable to produce in any brain 
less idiosyncratic than my own. 

Now, the spontaneous upsettings of brains this way 
and that at particular moments into particular ideas 
and combinations are matched by their equally spon- 
taneous permanent tiltings or saggings towards de- 
terminate directions. The humorous bent is quite 
characteristic ; the sentimental one equally so. And 
the personal tone of each mind, which makes it more 
alive to certain classes of experience than others, 
more attentive to certain impressions, more open to 
certain reasons, is equally the result of that invisible 
and unimaginable play of the forces of growth within 
the nervous system which, irresponsibly to the en- 






Great Men and their Environment. 251 

vironment, makes the brain peculiarly apt to function 
in a certain way. Here again the selection goes on. 
The products of the mind with the determined aesthetic 
bent please or displease the community. We adopt 
Wordsworth, and grow unsentimental and serene. We 
are fascinated by Schopenhauer, and learn from him 
the true luxury of woe. The adopted bent becomes 
a ferment in the community, and alters its tone. The 
alteration may be a benefit or a misfortune, for it is 
{pace Mr. Allen) a differentiation from within, which 
has to run the gauntlet of the larger environment's 
selective power. Civilized Languedoc, taking the tone 
of its scholars, poets, princes, and theologians, fell a 
prey to its rude Catholic environment in the Albigen- 
sian crusade. France in 1792, taking the tone of its 
St. Justs and Marats, plunged into its long career of 
unstable outward relations. Prussia in 1806, taking 
the tone of its Humboldts and its Steins, proved itself 
in the most signal way ' adjusted ' to its environment 
in 1872. 

Mr. Spencer, in one of the strangest chapters of 
his Psychology, 1 tries to show the necessary order in 
which the development of conceptions in the human 
race occurs. No abstract conception can be devel- 
oped, according to him, until the outward experi- 
ences have reached a certain degree of heterogeneity, 
definiteness, coherence, and so forth. 

"Thus the belief in an unchanging order, the belief in 
law, is a belief of which the primitive man is absolutely 
incapable. . . . Experiences such as he receives furnish 
but few data for the conception of uniformity, whether as 
displayed in things or in relations. . . . The daily impres- 

1 Part viii. chap. iii. 



252 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

sions which the savage gets yield the notion very imper- 
fectly, and in but few cases. Of all the objects around, — 
trees, stones, hills, pieces of water, clouds, and so forth, 
— most differ widely, . . . and few approach complete 
likeness so nearly as to make discrimination difficult. 
Even between animals of the same species it rarely happens 
that, whether alive or dead, they are presented in just the 
same attitudes. ... It is only along with a gradual de- 
velopment of the arts . . . that there come frequent 
experiences of perfectly straight lines admitting of complete 
apposition, bringing the perceptions of equality and in- 
equality. Still more devoid is savage life of the experiences 
which generate the conception of the uniformity of succes- 
sion. The sequences observed from hour to hour and day 
to day seem anything but uniform ; difference is a far more 
conspicuous trait among them. ... So that if we contem- 
plate primitive human life as a whole, we see that multi- 
formity of sequence, rather than uniformity, is the notion 
which it tends to generate. . . . Only as fast as the prac- 
tice of the arts develops the idea of measure can the 
consciousness of uniformity become clear. . . . Those con- 
ditions furnished by advancing civilization which make 
possible the notion of uniformity simultaneously make pos- 
sible the notion of exactness. . . . Hence the primitive 
man has little experience which cultivates the consciousness 
of what we call truth. How closely allied this is to the 
consciousness which the practice of the arts cultivates is 
implied even in language. We speak of a true surface as 
well as a true statement. Exactness describes perfection in 
a mechanical fit, as well as perfect agreement between the 
results of calculations." 

The whole burden of Mr. Spencer's book is to 
show the fatal way in which the mind, supposed 
passive, is moulded by its experiences of ' outer rela- 



Great Men and their Environment. 253 

tions.' In this chapter the .yard-stick, the balance, 
the chronometer, and other machines and instruments 
come to figure among the * relations ' external to the 
mind. Surely they are so, after they have been man- 
ufactured ; but only because of the preservative power 
of the social environment. Originally all these things 
and all other institutions were flashes of genius in an 
individual head, of which the outer environment 
showed no sign. Adopted by the race and become 
its heritage, they then supply instigations to new 
geniuses whom they environ to make new inventions 
and discoveries ; and so the ball of progress rolls. 
But take out the geniuses, or alter their idiosyncra- 
sies, and what increasing uniformities will the envi- 
ronment show? We defy Mr. Spencer or any one 
else to reply. 

The plain truth is that the ' philosophy ' of evolu- 
tion (as distinguished from our special information 
about particular cases of change) is a metaphysical 
creed, and nothing else. It is a mood of contem- 
plation, an emotional attitude, rather than a system 
of thought, — a mood which is old as the world, 
and which no refutation of any one incarnation of it 
(such as the spencerian philosophy) will dispel; the 
mood of fatalistic pantheism, with its intuition of the 
One and All, which was, and is, and ever shall be, 
and from whose womb each single thing proceeds. 
Far be it from us to speak slightingly here of so 
hoary and mighty a style of looking on the world as 
this. What we at present call scientific discoveries 
had nothing to do with bringing it to birth, nor can 
one easily conceive that they should ever give it its 
quietus^ no matter how logically incompatible with 
its spirit the ultimate phenomenal distinctions which 



254 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

science accumulates should turn out to be. It can 
laugh at the phenomenal distinctions on which science 
is based, for it draws its vital breath from a region 
which — whether above or below — is at least alto- 
gether different from that in which science dwells. A 
critic, however, who cannot disprove the truth of the 
metaphysic creed, can at least raise his voice in pro- 
test against its disguising itself in ' scientific ' plumes. 
I think that all who have had the patience to follow 
me thus far will agree that the spencerian ' philos- 
ophy ' of social and intellectual progress is an obsolete 
anachronism, reverting to a pre-darwinian type of 
thought, just as the spencerian philosophy of ' Force/ 
effacing all the previous distinctions between actual 
and potential energy, momentum, work, force, mass, 
etc., which physicists have with so much agony 
achieved, carries us back to a pre-galilean age. 



The Importance of Individuals. 255 



THE IMPORTANCE OF INDIVIDUALS. 

THE previous Essay, on Great Men, etc., called 
forth two replies, — one by Mr. Grant Allen, en- 
titled the ' Genesis of Genius,' in the Atlantic Monthly, 
vol. xlvii. p. 351 ; the other entitled 'Sociology and 
Hero Worship,' by Mr. John Fiske, ibidem, p. 75. 
The article which follows is a rejoinder to Mr. Allen's 
article. It was refused at the time by the Atlantic, 
but saw the day later in the Open Court for August, 
1890. It appears here as a natural supplement to 
the foregoing article, on which it casts some explana- 
tory light. 

Mr. Allen's contempt for hero-worship is based on 
very simple considerations. A nation's great men, 
he says, are but slight deviations from the general 
level. The hero is merely a special complex of the 
ordinary qualities of his race. The petty differences 
impressed upon ordinary Greek minds by Plato or 
Aristotle or Zeno, are nothing at all compared with 
the vast differences between every Greek mind and 
every Egyptian or Chinese mind. We may neglect 
them in a philosophy of history, just as in calcu- 
lating the impetus of a locomotive we neglect the 
extra impetus given by a single piece of better coal. 
What each man adds is but an infinitesimal fraction 
compared with what he derives from his parents, of 



2 56 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

indirectly from his earlier ancestry. And if what 
the past gives to the hero is so much bulkier than 
what the future receives from him, it is what really 
calls for philosophical treatment. The problem for 
the sociologist is as to what produces the average 
man ; the extraordinary men and what they produce 
may by the philosophers be taken for granted, as too 
trivial variations to merit deep inquiry. 

Now, as I wish to vie with Mr. Allen's unrivalled 
polemic amiability and be as conciliatory as possible, 
I will not cavil at his facts or try to magnify the chasm 
between an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Napoleon and 
the average level of their respective tribes. Let it be 
as small as Mr. Allen thinks. All that I object to is 
that he should think the mere size of a difference is 
capable of deciding whether that difference be or be 
not a fit subject for philosophic study. Truly enough, 
the details vanish in the bird's-eye view; but so does 
the bird's-eye view vanish in the details. Which is the 
right point of view for philosophic vision? Nature 
gives no reply, for both points of view, being equally 
real, are equally natural ; and no one natural reality 
per se is any more emphatic than any other. Accen- 
tuation, foreground, and background are created solely 
by the interested attention of the looker-on ; and if 
the small difference between the genius and his tribe 
interests me most, while the large one between that 
tribe and another tribe interests Mr. Allen, our con- 
troversy cannot be ended until a complete philosophy, 
accounting for all differences impartially, shall justify 
us both. 

An unlearned carpenter of my acquaintance once 
said in my hearing: " There is very little difference 
between one man and another ; but what little there 



The Importance of Individuals. 257 

is, is very important" This distinction seems to me 
to go to the root of the matter. It is not only the size 
of the difference which concerns the philosopher, but 
- also its place and its kind. An inch is a small thing, 
but we know the proverb about an inch on a man's 
nose. Messrs. Allen and Spencer, in inveighing 
against hero-worship, are thinking exclusively of the 
size of the inch ; I, as a hero-worshipper, attend to its 
seat and function. 

Now, there is a striking law over which few people 
seem to have pondered. It is this : That among all 
the differences which exist, the only ones that interest 
-us strongly are those we do not take for granted. We 
are not a bit elated that our friend should have two 
hands and the power of speech, and should practise 
the matter-of-course human virtues ; and quite as 
little are we vexed that our dog goes on all fours and 
fails to understand our conversation. Expecting no 
more from the latter companion, and no less from 
the former, we get what we expect and are satisfied. 
We never think of communing with 1 the dog by dis- 
course of philosophy, or with the friend by head- 
scratching or the throwing of crusts to be snapped 
at. But if either dog or friend fall above or below 
the expected standard, they arouse the most lively 
emotion. On our brother's vices or genius we never 
weary of descanting ; to his bipedism or his hairless 
skin we do not consecrate a thought. What he says 
may transport us ; that he is able to speak at all leaves 
us stone cold. The reason of all this is that his vir- 
tues and vices and utterances might, compatibly with 
the current range of variation in our tribe, be just the 
opposites of what they are, while his zoologically 
human attributes cannot possibly go astray. There 

17 



258 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 



is thus a zone of insecurity in human affairs in which 
all the dramatic interest lies ; the rest belongs to the 
dead machinery of the stage. This is the formative 
zone, the part not yet ingrained into the race's aver- 
age, not yet a typical, hereditary, and constant factor 
of the social community in which it occurs. It is like 
the soft layer beneath the bark of the tree in which 
all the year's growth is going on. Life has aban- 
doned the mighty trunk inside, which stands inert 
and belongs almost to the inorganic world. Layer 
after layer of human perfection separates me from 
the central Africans who pursued Stanley with cries 
of " meat, meat ! " This vast difference ought, on 
Mr. Allen's principles, to rivet my attention far more 
than the petty one which obtains between two such 
birds of a feather as Mr. Allen and myself. Yet 
while I never feel proud that the sight of a passer-by 
awakens in me no cannibalistic waterings of the 
mouth, I am free to confess that I shall feel very 
proud if I do not publicly appear inferior to Mr. 
Allen in the conduct of this momentous debate. To 
me as a teacher the intellectual gap between my 
ablest and my dullest student counts for infinitely 
more than that between the latter and the amphioxus : 
indeed, I never thought of the latter chasm till this 
moment. Will Mr. Allen seriously say that this is 
all human folly, and tweedledum and tweedledee? 

To a Veddah's eyes the differences between two 
white literary men seem slight indeed, — same clothes, 
same spectacles, same harmless disposition, same habit 
of scribbling on paper and poring over books, etc. 
" Just two white fellows," the Veddah will say, " with 
no perceptible difference." But what a difference to 
the literary men themselves ! Think, Mr. Allen, of 






The Importance of Individuals. 259 

confounding our philosophies together merely because 
both are printed in the same magazines and are indis- 
tinguishable to the eye of a Veddah ! Our flesh creeps 
at the thought. 

But in judging of history Mr. Allen deliberately 
prefers to place himself at the Veddah's point of view, 
and to see things en gros and out of focus, rather 
than minutely. It is quite true that there are things 
and differences enough to be seen either way. But 
which are the humanly important ones, those most 
worthy to arouse our interest, — the large distinctions 
or the small? In the answer to this question lies the 
whole divergence of the hero-worshippers from the so- 
ciologists. As I said at the outset, it is merely a quar- 
rel of emphasis ; and the only thing I can do is to 
state my personal reasons for the emphasis I prefer. 

The zone of the individual differences, and of the 
social 'twists' which by common confession they 
initiate, is the zone of formative processes, the dy- 
namic belt of quivering uncertainty, the line where 
past and future meet. It is the theatre of all we do 
not take for granted, the stage of the living drama 
of life ; and however narrow its scope, it is roomy 
enough to lodge the whole range of human passions. 
The sphere of the race's average, on the contrary, no 
matter how large it may be, is a dead and stagnant 
thing, an achieved possession, from which all inse- 
curity has vanished. Like the trunk of a tree, it has 
been built up by successive concretions of successive 
active zones. The moving present in which we live 
with its problems and passions, its individual rivalries, 
victories, and defeats, will soon pass over to the ma- 
jority and leave its small deposit on this static mass, 
to make room for fresh actors and a newer play. 



260 Essays in Popular Philosophy, 



And though it may be true, as Mr. Spencer predicts, 
that each later zone shall fatally be narrower than its 
forerunners ; and that when the ultimate lady-like tea 
table elysium of the Data of Ethics shall prevail, such 
questions as the breaking of eggs at the large or the 
small end will span the whole scope of possible human 
warfare, — - still even in this shrunken and enfeebled 
generation, spatio aetatis defessa vetusto, what eager- 
ness there will be ! Battles and defeats will occur, the 
victors will be glorified and the vanquished dishonored 
just as in the brave days of yore, the human heart 
still withdrawing itself from the much it has in safe pos- 
session, and concentrating all its passion upon those 
evanescent possibilities of fact which still quiver in 
fate's scale. 

And is not its instinct right? Do not we here 
grasp the race-differences in the making, and catch 
the only glimpse it is allotted to us to attain of the 
working units themselves, of whose differentiating 
action the race-gaps form but the stagnant sum? 
What strange inversion of scientific procedure does 
Mr. Allen practise when he teaches us to neglect 
elements and attend only to aggregate resultants? 
On the contrary, simply because the active ring, 
whatever its bulk, is elementary, I hold that the study 
of its conditions (be these never so ' proximate') is 
the highest of topics for the social philosopher. If 
individual variations determine its ups and downs and 
hair-breadth escapes and twists and turns, as Mr. 
Allen and Mr. Fiske both admit, Heaven forbid us 
from tabooing the study of these in favor of the 
average ! On the contrary, let us emphasize these, 
and the importance of these; and in picking out 
from history our heroes, and communing with their 



= 



The Importance of Individuals. 261 

kindred spirits, — in imagining as strongly as possible 
what differences their individualities brought about in 
this world, while its surface was still plastic in their 
hands, and what whilom feasibilities they made im- 
possible, — each one of us may best fortify and in- 
spire what creative energy may lie in his own soul. 1 

This is the lasting justification of hero-worship, and 
the pooh-poohing of it by 'sociologists' is the ever- 
lasting excuse for popular indifference to their gen- 
eral laws and averages. The difference between an 
America rescued by a Washington or by a ' Jenkins ' 
may, as Mr. Allen says, be 'little,' but it is, in the 
words of my carpenter friend, ' important.' Some 
organizing genius must in the nature of things have 
emerged from the French Revolution ; but what 
Frenchman will affirm it to have been an accident of 
no consequence that he should have had the super- 
numerary idiosyncrasies of a Bonaparte? What ani- 
mal, domestic or wild, will call it a matter of no 
moment that scarce a word of sympathy with brutes 
should have survived from the teachings of Jesus of 
Nazareth? 

The preferences of sentient creatures are what 
create the importance of topics. They are the abso- 
lute and ultimate law-giver here. And I for my part 
cannot but consider the talk of the contemporary 
sociological school about averages and general laws 
and predetermined tendencies, with its obligatory 
undervaluing of the importance of individual differ- 

1 M. G. Tarde's book (itself a work of genius), Les Lois de 
l'lmitation, Etude Sociologique (2me Edition, Paris, Alcan, 1895), 
is the best possible commentary on this text, — ' invention • on the 
one hand, and ' imitation ' on the other, being for this author the two 
sole factors of social change. 



262 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

ences, as the most pernicious and immoral of fatal- 
isms. Suppose there is a social equilibrium fated to 
be, whose is it to be, — that of your preference, or 
mine? There lies the question of questions, and it 
is one which no study of averages can decide. 



On some Hegelisms. 263 



ON SOME HEGELISMS. 1 

WE are just now witnessing a singular phenome- 
non in British and American philosophy. 
Hegelism, so defunct on its native soil that I believe 
but a single youthful disciple of the school is to be 
counted among the privat-docenten and younger pro- 
fessors of Germany, and whose older champions are 
all passing off the stage, has found among us so zeal- 
ous and able a set of propagandists that to-day it 
may really be reckoned one of the most powerful 
influences of the time in the higher walks of thought. 
And there is no doubt that, as a movement of reac- 
tion against the traditional British empiricism, the 
hegelian influence represents expansion and free- 
dom, and is doing service of a certain kind. Such 
service, however, ought not to make us blindly indul- 
gent. Hegel's philosophy mingles mountain-loads of 
corruption with its scanty merits, and must, now that 
it has become quasi-official, make ready to defend 
itself as well as to attack others. It is with no hope 
of converting independent thinkers, but rather with 
the sole aspiration of showing some chance youth- 
ful disciple that there is another point of view in 
philosophy that I fire this skirmisher's shot, which 
may, I hope, soon be followed by somebody else's 
heavier musketry. 

1 Reprinted from Mind, April, 1882. 



264 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

The point of view I have in mind will become 
clearer if I begin with a few preparatory remarks 
on the motives and difficulties of philosophizing in 
general. 

To show that the real is identical with the ideal 
may roughly be set down as the mainspring of philo- 
sophic activity. The atomic and mechanical concep- 
tion of the world is as ideal from the point of view of 
some of our faculties as the teleological one is from 
the point of view of others. In the realm of every 
ideal we can begin anywhere and roam over the field, 
each term passing us to its neighbor, each member 
calling for the next, and our reason rejoicing in its 
glad activity. Where the parts of a conception seem 
thus to belong together by inward kinship, where the 
whole is defined in a way congruous with our powers 
of reaction, to see is to approve and to understand. 

Much of the real seems at the first blush to follow 
a different law. The parts seem, as Hegel has said, to 
be shot out of a pistol at us. Each asserts itself as a 
simple brute fact, uncalled for by the rest, which, so 
far as we can see, might even make a better system 
without it. Arbitrary, foreign, jolting, discontinu- 
ous — are the adjectives by which we are tempted 
to describe it. And yet from out the bosom of it a 
partial ideality constantly arises which keeps alive our 
aspiration that the whole may some day be construed 
in ideal form. Not only do the materials lend them- 
selvesunder certain circumstances to aesthetic manipula- 
tion, but underlying their worst disjointedness are three 
great continua in which for each of us reason's ideal 
is actually reached. I mean the continua of memory 
or personal consciousness, of time and of space. In 



On some Hegelisms. 265 

these great matrices of all we know, we are absolutely 
at home. The things we meet are many, and yet are 
one ; each is itself, and yet all belong together ; con- 
tinuity reigns, yet individuality is not lost. 

Consider, for example, space. It is a unit. No 
force can in any way break, wound, or tear it. It has 
no joints between which you can pass your amputat- 
ing knife, for it penetrates the knife and is not split. 
Try to make a hole in space by annihilating an inch 
of it. To make a hole you must drive something else 
through. But what can you drive through space ex- 
cept what is itself spatial? 

But notwithstanding it is this very paragon of unity, 
space in its parts contains an infinite variety, and the 
unity and the variety do not contradict each other, 
for they obtain in different respects. The one is the 
whole, the many are the parts. Each part is one 
again, but only one fraction ; and part lies beside part 
in absolute nextness, the very picture of peace and 
non-contradiction. It is true that the space between 
two points both unites and divides them, just as the 
bar of a dumb-bell both unites and divides the two 
balls. But the union and the division are not secun- 
dum idem : it divides them by keeping them out of 
the space between, it unites them by keeping them 
out of the space beyond ; so the double function pre- 
sents no inconsistency. Self-contradiction in space 
could only ensue if one part tried to oust another 
from its position ; but the notion of such an absurdity 
vanishes in the framing, and cannot stay to vex the 
mind. 1 Beyond the parts we see or think at any 

1 The seeming contradiction between the infinitude of space and 
the fact that it is all finished and given and there, can be got over 
in more than one way. The simplest way is by idealism, which dis- 



266 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 



given time extend further parts; but the beyond is 
homogeneous with what is embraced, and follows the 
same law; so that no surprises, no foreignness, can 
ever emerge from space's womb. 

Thus with space our intelligence is absolutely inti- 
mate; it is rationality and transparency incarnate. 
The same may be said of the ego and of time. But 
if for simplicity's sake we ignore them, we may truly 
say that when we desiderate rational knowledge of 
the world the standard set by our knowledge of space 
is what governs Our desire. 1 Cannot the breaks, the 
jolts, the margin of foreignness, be exorcised from 
other things and leave them unitary like the space 
they fill? Could this be done, the philosophic king- 
dom of heaven would be at hand. 

But the moment we turn to the material qualities 

tinguishes between space as actual and space as potential. For ideal- 
ism, space only exists so far as it is represented ; but all actually rep- 
resented spaces are finite ; it is only possibly representable spaces 
that are infinite. 

1 Not only for simplicity's sake do we select space as the paragon 
of a rationalizing continuum. Space determines the relations of the 
items that enter it in a far more intricate way than does time ; in a 
far more fixed way than does the ego. By this last clause I mean 
that if things are in space at all, they must conform to geometry ; 
while the being in an ego at all need not make them conform to logic 
or any other manner of rationality. Under the sheltering wings of a 
self the matter of unreason can lodge itself as safely as any other 
kind of content. One cannot but respect the devoutness of the ego- 
worship of some of our English-writing Hegelians, But at the same 
time one cannot help fearing lest the monotonous contemplation of 
so barren a principle as that of the pure formal self (which, be it 
never so essential a condition of the existence of a world of organ- 
ized experience at all, must notwithstanding take its own character 
from, not give the character to, the separate empirical data over 
which its mantle is cast), one cannot but fear, I say, lest the religion 
of the transcendental ego should, like all religions of the ' one thing 
needful,' end by sterilizing and occluding the minds of its believers. 



, 



On some Hegelisms. 267 

of being, we find the continuity ruptured on every 
side. A fearful jolting begins. Even if we simplify 
the world by reducing it to its mechanical bare poles, 
— atoms and their motions, — the discontinuity is 
bad enough. The laws of clash, the effects of dis- 
tance upon attraction and repulsion, all seem arbi- 
trary collocations of data. The atoms themselves are 
so many independent facts, the existence of any one 
of which in no wise seems to involve the existence 
of the rest. We have not banished discontinuity, we 
have only made it finer-grained. And to get even 
that degree of rationality into the universe we have 
had to butcher a great part of its contents. The 
secondary qualities we stripped off from the reality 
and swept into the dust-bin labelled ' subjective illu- 
sion,' still as such are facts, and must themselves be 
rationalized in some way. 

But when we deal with facts believed to be purely 
subjective, we are farther than ever from the goal. 
We have not now the refuge of distinguishing be- 
tween the ' reality ' and its appearances. Facts of 
thought being the only facts, differences of thought 
become the only differences, and identities of thought 
the only identities there are. Two thoughts that seem 
different are different to all eternity. We can no 
longer speak of heat and light being reconciled in 
any tertium quid like wave-motion. For motion is 
motion, and light is light, and heat heat forever, and 
their discontinuity is as absolute as their existence. 
Together with the other attributes and things we 
conceive, they make up Plato's realm of immutable 
ideas. Neither per se calls for the other, hatches it 
out, is its ' truth,' creates it, or has any sort of inward 
community with it except that of being comparable 



268 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

in an ego and found more or less differing, or more 
or less resembling, as the case may be. The world 
of qualities is a world of things almost wholly discon- 
tinuous inter se. Each only says, " I am that I am," 
and each says it on its own account and with abso- 
lute monotony. The continuities of which they par- 
take, in Plato's phrase, the ego, space, and time, are 
for most of them the only grounds of union they 
possess. 

It might seem as if in the mere ' partaking ' there 
lay a contradiction of the discontinuity. If the white 
must partake of space, the heat of time, and so 
forth, — do not whiteness and space, heat and time, 
mutually call for or help to create each other? 

Yes ; a few such a priori couplings must be 
admitted. They are the axioms : no feeling except 
as occupying some space and time, or as a moment 
in some ego ; no motion but of something moved ; 
no thought but of an object; no time without a 
previous time, — and the like. But they are limited 
in number, and they obtain only between exces- 
sively broad genera of concepts, and leave quite 
undetermined what the specifications of those genera 
shall be. What feeling shall fill this time, what sub- 
stance execute this motion, what qualities combine in 
this being, are as much unanswered questions as if 
the metaphysical axioms never existed at all. 

The existence of such syntheses as they are does 
then but slightly mitigate the jolt, jolt, jolt we get 
when we pass over the facts of the world. Every- 
where indeterminate variables, subject only to these 
few vague enveloping laws, independent in all be- 
sides, — such seems the truth. 

In yet another way, too, ideal and real are so faf 



On some Hegelisms. 269 

apart that their conjunction seems quite hopeless. 
To eat our cake and have it, to lose our soul and 
save it, to enjoy the physical privileges of selfishness 
and the moral luxury of altruism at the same time, 
would be the ideal. But the real offers us these 
terms in the shape of mutually exclusive alternatives 
of which only one can be true at once ; so that we 
must choose, and in choosing murder one possibility. 
The wrench is absolute: "Either — or!" Just as 
whenever I bet a hundred dollars on an event, there 
comes an instant when I am a hundred dollars richer 
or poorer without any intermediate degrees passed 
over; just as my wavering between a journey to 
Portland or to New York does not carry me from 
Cambridge in a resultant direction in which both 
motions are compounded, say to Albany, but at a 
given moment results in the conjunction of reality in 
all its fulness for one alternative and impossibility in 
all its fulness for the other, — so the bachelor joys 
are utterly lost from the face of being for the married 
man, who must henceforward find his account in 
something that is not them but is good enough to 
make him forget them; so the careless and irrespon- 
sible living in the sunshine, the 'unbuttoning after 
supper and sleeping upon benches in the afternoon/ 
are stars that have set upon the path of him who in 
good earnest makes himself a moralist. The transi- 
tions are abrupt, absolute, truly shot out of a pistol ; 
for while many possibilities are called, the few that are 
chosen are chosen in all their sudden completeness. 

Must we then think that the world that fills space 
and time can yield us no acquaintance of that high 
and perfect type yielded by empty space and time 
themselves? Is what unity there is in the world 



270 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

mainly derived from the fact that the world is in 
space and time and 'partakes' of them? Can no 
vision of it forestall the facts of it, or know from 
some fractions the others before the others have 
arrived? Are there real logically indeterminate pos- 
sibilities which forbid there being any equivalent 
for the happening of it all but the happening itself? 
Can we gain no anticipatory assurance that what is to 
come will have no strangeness? Is there no substi- 
tute, in short, for life but the living itself in all its long- 
drawn weary length and breadth and thickness ? 

In the negative reply to all these questions, a 
modest common-sense finds no difficulty in acquiesc- 
ing. To such a way of thinking the notion of ' par- 
taking ' has a deep and real significance. Whoso par- 
takes of a thing enjoys his share, and comes into 
contact with the thing and its other partakers. But 
he claims no more. His share in no wise negates 
the thing or their share ; nor does it preclude his 
possession of reserved and private powers with which 
they have nothing to do, and which are not all 
absorbed in the mere function of sharing. Why may 
not the world be a sort of republican banquet of this 
sort, where all the qualities of being respect one 
another's personal sacredness, yet sit at the common 
table of space and time ? 

To me this view seems deeply probable. Things 
cohere, but the act of cohesion itself implies but few 
conditions, and leaves the rest of their qualifications 
indeterminate. As the first three notes of a tune 
comport many endings, all melodious, but the tune is 
not named till a particular ending has actually come, 
— so the parts actually known of the universe may 
comport many ideally possible complements. But as 



On some Hegelisms. 271 

the facts are not the complements, so the knowledge of 
the one is not the knowledge of the other in anything 
but the few necessary elements of which all must par- 
take in order to be together at all. Why, if one act of 
knowledge could from one point take in the total per- 
spective, with all mere possibilities abolished, should 
there ever have been anything more than that act? 
Why duplicate it by the tedious unrolling, inch by 
inch, of the foredone reality? No answer seems possi- 
ble. On the other hand, if we stipulate only a partial 
community of partially independent powers, we see 
perfectly why no one part controls the whole view, but 
each detail must come and be actually given, before, 
in any special sense, it can be said to be determined 
at all. This is the moral view, the view that gives to 
other powers the same freedom it would have itself, 
— not the ridiculous * freedom to do right,' which in 
my mouth can only mean the freedom to do as / think 
right, but the freedom to do as they think right, or 
wrong either. After all, what accounts do the nether- 
most bounds of the universe owe to me ? By what 
insatiate conceit and lust of intellectual despotism do 
I arrogate the right to know their secrets, and from 
my philosophic throne to play the only airs they shall 
march to, as if I were the Lord's anointed? Is not 
my knowing them at all a gift and not a right? And 
shall it be given before they are given? Data! gifts! 
something to be thankful for ! It is a gift that we can 
approach things at all, and, by means of the time and 
space of which our minds and they partake, alter our 
actions so as to meet them. 

There are ' bounds of ord'nance ' set for all things, 
where they must pause or rue it. * Facts ' are the 
bounds of human knowledge, set for it, not by it. 



272 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

Now, to a mind like Hegel's such pusillanimous 
twaddle sounds simply loathsome. Bounds that we 
can't overpass ! Data ! facts that say, " Hands off, 
till we are given " ! possibilities we can't control ! a 
banquet of which we merely share ! Heavens, this is 
intolerable ; such a world is no world for a philosopher 
to have to do with. He must have all or nothing. If 
the world cannot be rational in my sense, in the sense 
of unconditional surrender, I refuse to grant that it is 
rational at all. It is pure incoherence, a chaos, a 
nulliverse, to whose haphazard sway I will not truckle. 
But, no ! this is not the world. The world is philos- 
ophy's own, — a single block, of which, if she once 
get her teeth on any part, the whole shall inevitably 
become her prey and feed her all-devouring theoretic 
maw. Naught shall be but the necessities she cre- 
ates and impossibilities ; freedom shall mean freedom 
to obey her will ; ideal and actual shall be one : she, 
and I as her champion, will be satisfied on no lower 
terms. 

The insolence of sway, the #/3/h? on which gods 
take vengeance, is in temporal and spiritual matters 
usually admitted to be a vice. A Bonaparte and a 
Philip II. are called monsters. But when an intellect 
is found insatiate enough to declare that all existence 
must bend the knee to its requirements, we do not call 
its owner a monster, but a philosophic prophet. May 
not this be all wrong? Is there any one of our func- 
tions exempted from the common lot of liability to 
excess? And where everything else must be contented 
with its part in the universe, shall the theorizing fac- 
ulty ride rough-shod over the whole? 

I confess I can see no a priori reason for the excep- 
tion. He who claims it must be judged by the con- 



On some Hegelisms. 273 

sequences of his acts, and by them alone. Let Hegel 
then confront the universe with his claim, and see how 
he can make the two match. 

The universe absolutely refuses to let him travel 
without jolt. Time, space, and his ego are continu- 
ous ; so are degrees of heat, shades of light and color, 
and a few other serial things ; so too do potatoes call 
for salt, and cranberries for sugar, in the taste of one 
who knows what salt and sugar are. But on the whole 
there is nought to soften the shock of surprise to his 
intelligence, as it passes from one quality of being to 
another. Light is not heat, heat is not light ; and to 
him who holds the one the other is not given till it 
give itself. Real being comes moreover and goes 
from any concept at its own sweet will, with no per- 
mission asked of the conceiver. In despair must 
Hegel lift vain hands of imprecation ; and since he 
will take nothing but the whole, he must throw away 
even the part he might retain, and call the nature of 
things an absolute muddle and incoherence. 

But, hark ! What wondrous strain is this that steals 
upon his ear? Incoherence itself, may it not be the 
very sort of coherence I require? Muddle ! is it any- 
thing but a peculiar sort of transparency? Is not 
jolt passage? Is friction other than a kind of lubri- 
cation? Is not a chasm a filling? — a queer kind of 
filling, but a filling still. Why seek for a glue to hold 
things together when their very falling apart is the 
only glue you need? Let all that negation which 
seemed to disintegrate the universe be the mortar 
that combines it, and the problem stands solved. 
The paradoxical character of the notion could not 
fail to please a mind monstrous even in its native 

iS 



•274 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

Germany, where mental excess is endemic. Richard, 
for a moment brought to bay, is himself again. He 
vaults into the saddle, and from that time his career 
is that of a philosophic desperado, — one series of 
outrages upon the chastity of thought. 

And can we not ourselves sympathize with his 
mood in some degree? The old receipts of squeez- 
ing the thistle and taking the bull by the horns have 
many applications. An evil frankly accepted loses 
half its sting and all its terror. The Stoics had their 
cheap and easy way of dealing with evil. Call your 
woes goods, they said ; refuse to call your lost bless- 
ings by that name, — and you are happy. So of the 
unintelligibilities : call them means of intelligibility, 
and what further do you require? There is even a 
more legitimate excuse than that. In the exceeding- 
ness of the facts of life over our formulas lies a stand- 
ing temptation at certain times to give up trying to 
say anything adequate about them, and to take refuge 
in wild and whirling words which but confess our im- 
potence before their ineffability. Thus Baron Bunsen 
writes to his wife : " Nothing is near but the far ; 
nothing true but the highest; nothing credible but 
the inconceivable ; nothing so real as the impossible ; 
nothing clear but the deepest; nothing so visible as 
the invisible ; and no life is there but through death." 
Of these ecstatic moments the credo quia impossibile 
is the classical expression. Hegel's originality lies 
in his making their mood permanent and sacramental, 
and authorized to supersede all others, — not as a 
mystical bath and refuge for feeling when tired rea- 
son sickens of her intellectual responsibilities (thank 
Heaven ! that bath is always ready), but as the very 
form of intellectual responsibility itself. 



On some Hegelisms. 275 

And now after this long introduction, let me trace 
some of Hegel's ways of applying his discovery. His 
system resembles a mouse-trap, in which if you once 
pass the door you may be lost forever. Safety lies in 
not entering. Hegelians have anointed, so to speak, 
the entrance with various considerations which, stated 
in an abstract form, are so plausible as to slide us 
unresistingly and almost unwittingly through the 
fatal arch. It is not necessary to drink the ocean to 
know that it is salt ; nor need a critic dissect a whole 
system after proving that its premises are rotten. I 
shall accordingly confine myself to a few of the points 
that captivate beginners most; and assume that if 
they break down, so must the system which they 
prop. 

First of all, Hegel has to do utterly away with the 
sharing and partaking business he so much loathes. 
He will not call contradiction the glue in one place 
and identity in another; that is too half-hearted. 
Contradiction must be a glue universal, and must 
derive its credit from being shown to be latently in- 
volved in cases that we hitherto supposed to embody 
pure continuity. Thus, the relations of an ego with its 
objects, of one time with another time, of one place 
with another place, of a cause with its effect, of a 
thing with its properties, and especially of parts with 
wholes, must be shown to involve contradiction. 
Contradiction, shown to lurk in the very heart of 
coherence and continuity, cannot after that be held 
to defeat them, and must be taken as the universal 
solvent, — or, rather, there is no longer any need of 
a solvent. To ' dissolve ' things in identity was the 
dream of earlier cruder schools. Hegel will show 
that their very difference is their identity, and that 



276 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

in the act of detachment the detachment is undone, 
and they fall into each other's arms. 

Now, at the very outset it seems rather odd that a 
philosopher who pretends that the world is absolutely 
rational, or in other words that it can be completely 
understood, should fall back on a principle (the iden- 
tity of contradictories) which utterly defies under- 
standing, and obliges him in fact to use the word 
* understanding,' whenever it occurs in his pages, as a 
term of contempt. Take the case of space we used 
above. The common man who looks at space be- 
lieves there is nothing in it to be acquainted with 
beyond what he sees; no hidden machinery, no 
secrets, nothing but the parts as they lie side by side 
and make the static whole. His intellect is satisfied 
with accepting space as an ultimate genus of the 
given. But Hegel cries to him : " Dupe ! dost thou 
not see it to be one nest of incompatibilities? Do 
not the unity of its wholeness and the diversity of its 
parts stand in patent contradiction? Does it not both 
unite and divide things ; and but for this strange and 
irreconcilable activity, would it be at all? The hidden 
dynamism of self-contradiction is what incessantly 
produces the static appearance by which your sense 
is fooled." 

But if the man ask how self-contradiction can do 
all this, and how its dynamism may be seen to work, 
Hegel can only reply by showing him the space itself 
and saying: " Lo, thus!' In other words, instead of 
the principle of explanation being more intelligible 
than the thing to be explained, it is absolutely unin- 
telligible if taken by itself, and must appeal to its 
pretended product to prove its existence. Surely, 
such a system of explaining notum per ignotum y of 



On some Hegelisms. 277 

making the explicans borrow credentials from the 
explicand, and of creating paradoxes and impossibili- 
ties where none were suspected, is a strange candidate 
for the honor of being a complete rationalizer of the 
world. 

The principle of the contradictoriness of identity 
and the identity of contradictories is the essence of 
the hegelian system. But what probably washes this 
principle down most with beginners is the combina- 
tion in which its author works it with another princi- 
ple which is by no means characteristic of his system, 
and which, for want of a better name, might be called 
the ' principle of totality.' This principle says that 
you cannot adequately know even a part until you 
know of what whole it forms a part. As Aristotle 
writes and Hegel loves to quote, an amputated hand 
is not even a hand. And as Tennyson says, — 

" Little flower — but if I could understand 
What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
I should know what God and man is." 

Obviously, until we have taken in all the relations, 
immediate or remote, into which the thing actually 
enters or potentially may enter, we do not know all 
about the thing. 

And obviously for such an exhaustive acquaintance 
with the thing, an acquaintance with every other 
thing, actual and potential, near and remote, is 
needed ; so that it is quite fair to say that omni- 
science alone can completely know any one thing 
as it stands. Standing in a world of relations, that 
world must be known before the thing is fully known. 
This doctrine is of course an integral part of empiri- 
cism, an integral part of common-sense. Since when 
could good men not apprehend the passing hour 



278 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 



in the light of life's larger sweep, — not grow dispas 
sionate the more they stretched their view? Did 
the ' law of sharing ' so little legitimate their proce- 
dure that a law of identity of contradictories, forsooth, 
must be trumped up to give it scope? Out upon 
the idea ! 

Hume's account of causation is a good illustration 
of the way in which empiricism may use the principle 
of totality. We call something a cause ; but we at the 
same time deny its effect to be in any latent way con- 
tained in or substantially identical with it. We thus 
cannot tell what its causality amounts to until its 
effect has actually supervened. The effect, then, or 
something beyond the thing is what makes the thing 
to be so far as it is a cause. Humism thus says 
that its causality is something adventitious and not 
necessarily given when its other attributes are there. 
Generalizing this, empiricism contends that we must 
everywhere distinguish between the intrinsic being of 
a thing and its relations, and, among these, between 
those that are essential to our knowing it at all and 
those that may be called adventitious. The thing as 
actually present in a given world is there with all its 
relations ; for it to be known as it there exists, they 
must be known too, and it and they form a single fact 
for any consciousness large enough to embrace that 
world as a unity. But what constitutes this singleness 
of fact, this unity? Empiricism says, Nothing but the 
relation-yielding matrix in which the several items of 
the world find themselves embedded, — time, namely, 
and space, and the mind of the knower. And it says 
that were some of the items quite different from what 
they are and others the same, still, for aught we can 
see, an equally unitary world might be, provided each 






On some Hegelisms. 279 

item were an object for consciousness and occupied a 
determinate point in space and time. All the adven- 
titious relations would in such a world be changed, 
along with the intrinsic natures and places of the 
beings between which they obtained ; but the ' prin- 
ciple of totality ' in knowledge would in no wise be 
affected. 

But Hegelism dogmatically denies all this to be 
possible. In the first place it says there are no in- 
trinsic natures that may change ; in the second it 
says there are no adventitious relations. When the 
relations of what we call a thing are told, no caput 
tnortuum of intrinsicality, no ' nature,' is left. The 
relations soak up all there is of the thing ; the ' items ' 
of the world are but foci of relation with other foci of 
relation; and all the relations are necessary. The 
unity of the world has nothing to do with any 
* matrix.' The matrix and the items, each with all, 
make a unity, simply because each in truth is all the 
rest. The proof lies in the hegelian principle of to- 
tality, which demands that if any one part be posited 
alone all the others shall forthwith emanate from it and 
infallibly reproduce the whole. In the modus operandi 
of the emanation comes in, as I said, that partnership 
of the principle of totality with that of the identity of 
contradictories which so recommends the latter to 
beginners in Hegel's philosophy. To posit one item 
alone is to deny the rest ; to deny them is to refer to 
them ; to refer to them is to begin, at least, to bring 
them on the scene ; and to begin is in the fulness of 
time to end. 

If we call this a monism, Hegel is quick to cry, 
Not so ! To say simply that the one item is the rest 



280 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

of the universe is as false and one-sided as to say that 
it is simply itself. It is both and neither; and the 
only condition on which we gain the right to affirm 
that it is, is that we fail not to keep affirming all the 
while that it is not, as well. Thus the truth refuses 
to be expressed in any single act of judgment or 
sentence. The world appears as a monism and a 
pluralism, just as it appeared in our own introductory 
exposition. 

But the trouble that keeps us and Hegel from ever 
joining hands over this apparent formula of brother- 
hood is that we distinguish, or try to distinguish, the 
respects in which the world is one from those in which 
it is many, while all such stable distinctions are what 
he most abominates. The reader may decide which 
procedure helps his reason most. For my own part, 
the time-honored formula of empiricist pluralism, that 
the world cannot be set down in any single proposi- 
tion, grows less instead of more intelligible when I 
add, " And yet the different propositions that express 
it are one ! " The unity of the propositions is that of 
the mind that harbors them. Any one who insists 
that their diversity is in any way itself their unity, can 
only do so because he loves obscurity and mystifica- 
tion for their own pure sakes. 

Where you meet with a contradiction among real- 
ities, Herbart used to say, it shows you have failed to 
make a real distinction. Hegel's sovereign method 
of going to work and saving all possible contradic- 
tions, lies in pertinaciously refusing to distinguish. 
He takes what is true of a term secundum quid, treats 
it as true of the same term simpliciter, and then, of 
course, applies it to the term secundum aliud. A 



On some Hegelisms. 281 

good example of this is found in the first triad. This 
triad shows that the mutability of the real world is 
due to the fact that being constantly negates itself; 
that whatever is by the same act is not, and gets un- 
done and swept away ; and that thus the irremediable 
torrent of life about which so much rhetoric has been 
written has its roots in an ineluctable necessity which 
lies revealed to our logical reason. This notion of a 
being which forever stumbles over its own feet, and 
has to change in order to exist at all, is a very pictur- 
esque symbol of the reality, and is probably one of 
the points that make young readers feel as if a deep 
core of truth lay in the system. 

But how is the reasoning done? Pure being is as- 
sumed, without determinations, being secundum quid. 
In this respect it agrees with nothing. Therefore 
simpliciter it is nothing ; wherever we find it, it is no- 
thing; crowned with complete determinations then, 
or secundum aliud, it is nothing still, and hebt sick 
auf. 

It is as if we said, Man without his clothes may be 
named 'the naked.' Therefore man simpliciter is 
the naked ; and finally man with his hat, shoes, and 
overcoat on is the naked still. 

Of course we may in this instance or any other 
repeat that the conclusion is strictly true, however 
comical it seems. Man within the clothes is naked, 
just as he is without them. Man would never have 
invented the clothes had he not been naked. The 
fact of his being clad at all does prove his essential 
nudity. And so in general, — the form of any judg- 
ment, being the addition of a predicate to a subject, 
shows that the subject has been conceived without 
the predicate, and thus by a strained metaphor may 



282 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

be called the predicate's negation. Well and good ! 
let the expression pass. But we must notice this. 
The judgment has now created a new subject, the 
naked-clad, and all propositions regarding this must 
be judged on their own merits ; for those true of the 
old subject, ' the naked/ are no longer true of this 
one. For instance, we cannot say because the naked 
pure and simple must not enter the drawing-room 
or is in danger of taking cold, that the naked with 
his clothes on will also take cold or must stay in his 
bedroom. Hold to it eternally that the clad man is 
still naked if it amuse you, — 't is designated in the 
bond; but the so-called contradiction is a sterile 
boon. Like Shylock's pound of flesh, it leads to no 
consequences. It does not entitle you to one drop of 
his Christian blood either in the way of catarrh, so- 
cial exclusion, or what further results pure nakedness 
may involve. 

In a version of the first step given by our foremost 
American Hegelian, 1 we find this playing with the 
necessary form of judgment. Pure being, he says, 
has no determinations. But the having none is itself 
a determination. Wherefore pure being contradicts 
its own self, and so on. Why not take heed to the 
meaning of what is said ? When we make the predi- 
cation concerning pure being, our meaning is merely 
the denial of all other determinations than the particu- 
lar one we make. The showman who advertised his 
elephant as ' larger than any elephant in the world 
except himself must have been in an hegelian coun- 
try where he was afraid that if he were less explicit 
the audience would dialectically proceed to say: 

1 Journal of Speculative Philosophy, viii. 37. 



On some Hegelisms. 283 

" This elephant, larger than any in the world, involves 
a contradiction ; for he himself is in the world, and 
so stands endowed with the virtue of being both 
larger and smaller than himself, — a perfect hegelian 
elephant, whose immanent self-contradictoriness can 
only be removed in a higher synthesis. Show us the 
higher synthesis ! We don't care to see such a mere 
abstract creature as your elephant." It may be (and 
it was indeed suggested in antiquity) that all things 
are of their own size by being both larger and smaller 
than themselves. But in the case of this elephant the 
scrupulous showman nipped such philosophizing and 
all its inconvenient consequences in the bud, by ex- 
plicitly intimating that larger than any other elephant 
was all he meant. 

Hegel's quibble with this word other exemplifies 
the same fallacy. All ' others,' as such, are accord- 
ing to him identical. That is, ' otherness,' which can 
only be predicated of a given thing A, secundum quid 
(as other than B, etc.), is predicated simpliciter, and 
made to identify the A in question with B, which is 
other only secundum aliud, — namely other than A. 

Another maxim that Hegelism is never tired of 
repeating is that " to know a limit is already to be 
beyond it." " Stone walls do not a prison make, 
nor iron bars a cage." The inmate of the peniten- 
tiary shows by his grumbling that he is still in the 
stage of abstraction and of separative thought. The 
more keenly he thinks of the fun he might be having 
outside, the more deeply he ought to feel that the 
walls identify him with it. They set him beyond 
them secundum quid, in imagination, in longing, in 
despair; argal they take him there simpliciter and 



284 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

in every way, — in flesh, in power, in deed. Foolish 
convict, to ignore his blessings ! 

Another mode of stating his principle is this : " To 
know the finite as such, is also to know the infinite." 
Expressed in this abstract shape, the formula is as 
insignificant as it is unobjectionable. We can cap 
every word with a negative particle, and the word 
finished immediately suggests the word unfinished, 
and we know the two words together. 

But it is an entirely different thing to take the 
knowledge of a concrete case of ending, and to say 
that it virtually makes us acquainted with other con- 
crete facts in infinitum. For, in the first place, the 
end may be an absolute one. The matter of the 
universe, for instance, is according to all appearances 
in finite amount ; and if we knew that we had counted 
the last bit of it, infinite knowledge in that respect, so 
far from being given, would be impossible. With re- 
gard to space y it is true that in drawing a bound we 
are aware of more. But to treat this little fringe as 
the equal of infinite space is ridiculous. It resembles 
infinite space secundum quid, or in but one respect, 
— its spatial quality. We believe it homogeneous 
with whatever spaces may remain ; but it would be 
fatuous to say, because one dollar in my pocket is 
homogeneous with all the dollars in the country, that 
to have it is to have them. The further points of 
space are as numerically distinct from the fringe as 
the dollars from the dollar, and not until we have 
actually intuited them can we be said to ' know ' 
them simpliciter. The hegelian reply is that the 
quality of space constitutes its only worth; and that 
there is nothing true, good, or beautiful to be known 



On some Hegelisms. 285 

in the spaces beyond which is not already known in 
the fringe. This introduction of a eulogistic term 
into a mathematical question is original. The ' true ' 
and the ' false ' infinite are about as appropriate dis- 
tinctions in a discussion of cognition as the good and 
the naughty rain would be in a treatise on meteor- 
ology. But when we grant that all the worth of the 
knowledge of distant spaces is due to the knowledge 
of what they may carry in them, it then appears more 
than ever absurd to say that the knowledge of the 
fringe is an equivalent for the infinitude of the distant 
knowledge. The distant spaces even simpliciter are 
not yet yielded to our thinking; and if they were 
yielded simpliciter, would not be yielded secundum 
aliudy or in respect to their material filling out. 

Shylock's bond was an omnipotent instrument com- 
pared with this knowledge of the finite, which remains 
the ignorance it always was, till the infinite by its own 
act has piece by piece placed itself in our hands. 

Here Hegelism cries out: " By the identity of the 
knowledges of infinite and finite I never meant that 
one could be a substitute for the other; nor does true 
philosophy ever mean by identity capacity for substi- 
tution." This sounds suspiciously like the g<ood and 
the naughty infinite, or rather like the mysteries of 
the Trinity and the Eucharist. To the unsentimental 
mind there are but two sorts of identity, — total iden- 
tity and partial identity. Where the identity is total, 
the things can be substituted wholly for one another. 
Where substitution is impossible, it must be that the 
identity is incomplete. It is the duty of the student 
then to ascertain the exact quid, secundum which it 
obtains, as we have tried to do above. Even the 
Catholic will tell you that when he believes in the 



286 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

identity of the wafer with Christ's body, he does not 
mean in all respects, — so that he might use it to ex- 
hibit muscular fibre, or a cook make it smell like 
baked meat in the oven. He means that in the one 
sole respect of nourishing his being in a certain way, 
it is identical with and can be substituted for the very 
body of his Redeemer. 

1 The knowledge of opposites is one/ is one of the 
hegelian first principles, of which the preceding are 
perhaps only derivatives. Here again Hegelism takes 
1 knowledge ' simpliciter, and substituting it for know- 
ledge in a particular respect, avails itself of the con- 
fusion to cover other respects never originally implied. 
When the knowledge of a thing is given us, we no 
doubt think that the thing may or must have an oppo- 
site. This postulate of something opposite we may 
call a ' knowledge of the opposite ' if we like ; but it 
is a knowledge of it in only that one single respect, 
that it is something opposite. No number of opposites 
to a quality we have never directly experienced could 
ever lead us positively to infer what that quality is. 
There is a jolt between the negation of them and the 
actual positing of it in its proper shape, that twenty 
logics of Hegel harnessed abreast cannot drive us 
smoothly over. 

The use of the maxim ' All determination is nega- 
tion* is the fattest and most full-blown application of 
the method of refusing to distinguish. Taken in its 
vague confusion, it probably does more than anything 
else to produce the sort of flicker and dazzle which 
are the first mental conditions for the reception of 
Hegel's system. The word ' negation ' taken sirnpli- 
citer is treated as if it covered an indefinite number of 



On some Hegelisms. 287 

secundums, culminating in the very peculiar one of self- 
negation. Whence finally the conclusion is drawn 
that assertions are universally self-contradictory. As 
this is an important matter, it seems worth while to 
treat it a little minutely. 

When I measure out a pint, say of milk, and so de- 
termine it, what do I do ? I virtually make two asser- 
tions regarding it, — it is this pint ; it is not those 
other gallons. One of these is an affirmation, the 
other a negation. Both have a common subject ; but 
the predicates being mutually exclusive, the two as- 
sertions lie beside each other in endless peace. 

I may with propriety be said to make assertions 
more remote still, — assertions of which those other 
gallons are the subject. As it is not they, so are they 
not the pint which it is. The determination " this is 
the pint" carries with it the negation, — " those are 
not the pints." Here we have the same predicate ; 
but the subjects are exclusive of each other, so there 
is again endless peace. In both couples of proposi- 
tions negation and affirmation are secundum aliud: this 
is a; this is n't not-#. This kind of negation involved 
in determination cannot possibly be what Hegel wants 
for his purposes. The table is not the chair, the fire- 
place is not the cupboard, — these are literal expres- 
sions of the law of identity and contradiction, those 
principles of the abstracting and separating under- 
standing for which Hegel has so sovereign a contempt, 
and which his logic is meant to supersede. 

And accordingly Hegelians pursue the subject fur- 
ther, saying there is in every determination an ele- 
ment of real conflict. Do you not in determining 
the milk to be this pint exclude it forever from the 
chance of being those gallons, frustrate it from expan- 



288 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

sion? And so do you not equally exclude them from 
the being which it now maintains as its own? 

Assuredly if you had been hearing of a land flow- 
ing with milk and honey, and had gone there with un- 
limited expectations of the rivers the milk would fill ; 
and if you found there was but this single pint in the 
whole country, — the determination of the pint would 
exclude another determination which your mind had 
previously made of the milk. There would be a real 
conflict resulting in the victory of one side. The 
rivers would be negated by the single pint being 
affirmed ; and as rivers and pint are affirmed of the 
same milk (first as supposed and then as found), the 
contradiction would be complete. 

But it is a contradiction that can never by any 
chance occur in real nature or being. It can only 
occur between a false representation of a being and 
the true idea of the being when actually cognized. 
The first got into a place where it had no rights and 
had to be ousted. But in rerum naturd things do not 
get into one another's logical places. The gallons 
first spoken of never say, " We are the pint; " the pint 
never says, " I am the gallons." It never tries to 
expand ; and so there is no chance for anything to 
exclude or negate it. It thus remains affirmed 
absolutely. 

Can it be believed in the teeth of these elementary 
truths that the principle determinatio negatio is held 
throughout Hegel to imply an active contradiction, 
conflict, and exclusion? Do the horse-cars jingling 
outside negate me writing in this room? Do I, reader, 
negate you? Of course, if I say, "Reader, we are 
two, and therefore I am two," I negate you, for I am 
actually thrusting a part into the seat of the whole. 



On some Hegelisms. 289 

The orthodox logic expresses the fallacy by saying 
the we is taken by me distributively instead of collec- 
tively ; but as long as I do not make this blunder, and 
am content with my part, we all are safe. In rerum 
naturdy parts remain parts. Can you imagine one 
position in space trying to get into the place of an- 
other position and having to be ' contradicted ' by that 
other? Can you imagine your thought of an object 
trying to dispossess the real object from its being, and 
so being negated by it? The great, the sacred law 
of partaking, the noiseless step of continuity, seems 
something that Hegel cannot possibly understand. 
All or nothing is his one idea. For him each point of 
space, of time, each feeling in the ego, each quality of 
being, is clamoring, " I am the all, — there is nought 
else but me." This clamor is its essence, which has 
to be negated in another act which gives it its true 
determination. What there is of affirmative in this 
determination is thus the mere residuum left from 
the negation by others of the negation it originally 
applied to them. 

But why talk of residuum? The Kilkenny cats of 
fable could leave a residuum in the shape of their 
undevoured tails. But the Kilkenny cats of existence 
as it appears in the pages of Hegel are all-devouring, 
and leave no residuum. Such is the unexampled 
fury of their onslaught that they get clean out of 
themselves and into each other, nay more, pass 
right through each other, and then " return into 
themselves " ready for another round, as insatiate, 
but as inconclusive, as the one that went before. 

If I characterized Hegel's own mood as vftpis, the 
insolence of excess, what shall I say of the mood he 
ascribes to being? Man makes the gods in his im- 

IQ 



290 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

age; and Hegel, in daring to insult the spotless 
o-aHppoavvr) of space and time, the bound-respecters, 
in branding as strife that law of sharing under whose 
sacred keeping, like a strain of music, like an odor of 
incense (as Emerson says), the dance of the atoms 
goes forward still, seems to me but to manifest his 
own deformity. 

This leads me to animadvert on an erroneous In- 
ference which hegelian idealism makes from the form 
of the negative judgment. Every negation, it says, 
must be an intellectual act. Even the most naif real- 
ism will hardly pretend that the non-table as such ex- 
sists in se after the same fashion as the table does. But 
table and non-table, since they are given to our thought 
together, must be consubstantial. Try to make the 
position or affirmation of the table as simple as you 
can, it is also the negation of the non-table ; and thus 
positive being itself seems after all but a function of 
intelligence, like negation. Idealism is proved, real- 
ism is unthinkable. Now I have not myself the least 
objection to idealism, — an hypothesis which volu- 
minous considerations make plausible, and whose diffi- 
culties may be cleared away any day by new discrim- 
inations or discoveries. But I object to proving by 
these patent ready-made a priori methods that which 
can only be the fruit of a wide and patient induction. 
For the truth is that our affirmations and negations 
do not stand on the same footing at all, and are any- 
thing but consubstantial. An affirmation says some- 
thing about an objective existence. A negation says 
something about an affirmation, — namely, that it is 
false. There are no negative predicates or falsities in 
nature. Being makes no false hypotheses that have 



On Some Hegelisms. 291 

to be contradicted. The only denials she can be in 
any way construed to perform are denials of our 
errors. This shows plainly enough that denial must 
be of something mental, since the thing denied is 
always a fiction. " The table is not the chair " sup- 
poses the speaker to have been playing with the false 
notion that it may have been the chair. But affirma- 
tion may perfectly well be of something having no 
such necessary and constitutive relation to thought. 
Whether it really is of such a thing is for harder con- 
siderations to decide. 

If idealism be true, the great question that presents 
itself is whether its truth involve the necessity of an 
infinite, unitary, and omniscient consciousness, or 
whether a republic of semi-detached consciousnesses 
will do, — consciousnesses united by a certain com- 
mon fund of representations, but each possessing a 
private store which the others do not share. Either 
hypothesis is to me conceivable. But whether the 
egos be one or many, the nextness of representations 
to one another within them is the principle of unifica- 
tion of the universe. To be thus consciously next 
to some other representation is the condition to which 
each representation must submit, under penalty of 
being excluded from this universe, and like Lord 
Dundreary's bird ' flocking all alone,' and forming a 
separate universe by itself. But this is only a condi- 
tion of which the representations partake; it leaves 
all their other determinations undecided. To say, 
because representation b cannot be in the same uni- 
verse with a without being a's neighbor; that therefore 
a possesses, involves, or necessitates b, hide and hair, 
flesh and fell, all appurtenances and belongings, — is 



292 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

only the silly hegelian all-or-nothing insatiateness 
once more. 

Hegel's own logic, with all the senseless hocus- 
pocus of its triads, utterly fails to prove his position. 
The only evident compulsion which representations 
exert upon one another is compulsion to submit to 
the conditions of entrance into the same universe with 
them — the conditions of continuity, of selfhood, 
space, and time — under penalty of being excluded. 
But what this universe shall be is a matter of fact 
which we cannot decide till we know what represen- 
tations have submitted to these its sole conditions,, 
The conditions themselves impose no further require- 
ments. In short, the notion that real contingency and 
ambiguity may be features of the real world is a per- 
fectly unimpeachable hypothesis. Only in such a 
world can moral judgments have a claim to be. For 
the bad is that which takes the place of something 
else which possibly might have been where it now is, 
and the better is that which absolutely might be where 
it absolutely is not. In the universe of Hegel — the 
absolute block whose parts have no loose play, the 
pure plethora of necessary being with the oxygen of 
possibility all suffocated out of its lungs — there can 
be neither good nor bad, but one dead level of mere 
fate. 

But I have tired the reader out. The worst of 
criticising Hegel is that the very arguments we use 
against him give forth strange and hollow sounds 
that make them seem almost as fantastic as the errors 
to which they are addressed. The sense of a uni- 
versal mirage, of a ghostly unreality, steals over us, 
which is the very moonlit atmosphere of Hegelism 
itself. What wonder then if, instead of convert- 



On some Hegelisms. 293 

ing, our words do but rejoice and delight, those 
already baptized in the faith of confusion ? To their 
charmed senses we all seem children of Hegel to- 
gether, only some of us have not the wit to know our 
own father. Just as Romanists are sure to inform us 
that our reasons against Papal Christianity uncon- 
sciously breathe the purest spirit of Catholicism, so 
Hegelism benignantly smiles at our exertions, and 
murmurs, " If the red slayer think he slays ; " 
"When me they fly, I am the wings," etc. 

To forefend this unwelcome adoption, let me reca- 
pitulate in a few propositions the reasons why I am 
not an hegelian. 

1. We cannot eat our cake and have it; that is, 
the only real contradiction there can be between 
thoughts is where one is true, the other false. When 
this happens, one must go forever; nor is there any 
1 higher synthesis ' in which both can wholly revive. 

2. A chasm is not a bridge in any utilizable sense ; 
that is, no mere negation can be the instrument of a 
positive advance in thought. 

3. The continua, time, space, and the ego, are 
bridges, because they are without chasm. 

4. But they bridge over the chasms between repre- 
sented qualities only partially. 

5. This partial bridging, however, makes the qual- 
ities share in a common world. 

6. The other characteristics of the qualities are 
separate facts. 

7. But the same quality appears in many times and 
spaces. Generic sameness of the quality wherever 
found becomes thus a further means by which the 
jolts are reduced. 

8. But between different qualities jolts remain 



294 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

Each, as far as the other is concerned, is an abso- 
lutely separate and contingent being. 

9. The moral judgment may lead us to postulate 
as irreducible the contingencies of the world. 

10. Elements mutually contingent are not in con- 
flict so long as they partake of the continua of time, 
space, etc., — partaking being the exact opposite of 
strife. They conflict only when, as mutually exclu- 
sive possibilities, they strive to possess themselves of 
the same parts of time, space, and ego. 

11. That there are such real conflicts, irreducible 
to any intelligence, and giving rise to an excess of 
possibility over actuality, is an hypothesis, but a 
credible one. No philosophy should pretend to be 
anything more. 

Note. — Since the preceding article was written, some obser- 
vations on the effects of nitrous-oxide-gas-intoxication which I 
was prompted to make by reading the pamphlet called The 
Anaesthetic Revelation and the Gist of Philosophy, by Benjamin 
Paul Blood, Amsterdam, N. Y., 1874, have made me understand 
better than ever before both the strength and the weakness of 
Hegel's philosophy. I strongly urge others to repeat the experi- 
ment, which with pure gas is short and harmless enough. The 
effects will of course vary with the individual, just as they vary 
in the same individual from time to time; but it is probable 
that in the former case, as in the latter, a generic resemblance 
will obtain. With me, as with every other person of whom I 
have heard, the keynote of the experience is the tremendously 
exciting sense of an intense metaphysical illumination. Truth 
lies open to the view in depth beneath depth of almost blinding 
evidence. The mind sees all the logical relations of being with 
an apparent subtlety and instantaneity to which its normal con- 
sciousness offers no parallel ; only as sobriety returns, the feel- 
ing of insight fades, and one is left staring vacantly at a few 
disjointed words and phrases, as one stares at a cadaverous- 
looking snow-peak from which the sunset glow has just fled, or 
at the black cinder left by an extinguished brand. 



On some Hegelisms. 295 

The immense emotional sense of reconciliation which char- 
acterizes the ' maudlin ' stage of alcoholic drunkenness, — a 
stage which seems silly to lookers-on, but the subjective rapture 
of which probably constitutes a chief part of the temptation to 
the vice, — is well known. The centre and periphery of things 
seem to come together. The ego and its objects, the meum 
and the tuum, are one. Now this, only a thousandfold en- 
hanced, was the effect upon me of the gas : and its first result 
was to make peal through me with unutterable power the con- 
viction that Hegelism was true after all, and that the deepest 
convictions of my intellect hitherto were wrong. Whatever 
idea or representation occurred to the mind was seized by the 
same logical forceps, and served to illustrate the same truth ; 
and that truth was that every opposition, among whatsoever 
things, vanishes in a higher unity in which it is based; that all 
contradictions, so-called, are but differences ; that all differences 
are of degree ; that all degrees are of a common kind ; that 
unbroken continuity is of the essence of being; and that we 
are literally in the midst of an infinite, to perceive the existence 
of which is the utmost we can attain. Without the same as 
a basis, how could strife occur ? Strife presupposes something 
to be striven about; and in this common topic, the same for 
both parties, the differences merge. From the hardest contra- 
diction to the tenderest diversity of verbiage differences evapo- 
rate ; yes and no agree at least in being assertions ; a denial of 
a statement is but another mode of stating the same, contra- 
diction can only occur of the same thing, — all opinions are 
thus synonyms, are synonymous, are the same. But the same 
phrase by difference of emphasis is two ; and here again differ- 
ence and no-difference merge in one. 

It is impossible to convey an idea of the torrential character 
of the identification of opposites as it streams through the mind 
in this experience. I have sheet after sheet of phrases dictated 
or written during the intoxication, which to the sober reader 
seem meaningless drivel, but which at the moment of tran- 
scribing were fused in the fire of infinite rationality. God and 
devil, good and evil, life and death, I and thou, sober and drunk, 
matter and form, black and white, quantity and quality, shiver of 
ecstasy and shudder of horror, vomiting and swallowing, inspira- 
tion and expiration, fate and reason, great and small, extent and 
intent, joke and earnest, tragic and comic, and fifty other con- 



296 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

trasts figure in these pages in the same monotonous way. The 
mind saw how each term belonged to its contrast through a knife- 
edge moment of transition which it effected, and which, peren- 
nial and eternal, was the nunc stans of life. The thought of 
mutual implication of the parts in the bare form of a judgment 
of opposition, as 'nothing — but,' 'no more — than,' 'only — if,* 
etc., produced a perfect delirium of theoretic rapture. And at 
last, when definite ideas to work on came slowly, the mind went 
through the mere form of recognizing sameness in identity by 
contrasting the same word with itself, differently emphasized, 
or shorn of its initial letter. Let me transcribe a few sentences : 

What 's mistake but a kind of take ? 

What's nausea but a kind of -ausea? 

Sober, drunk, -unk, astonishment. 

Everything can become the subject of criticism — how criti- 
cise without something to criticise ? 

Agreement — disagreement ! ! 

Emotion — motion ! ! ! 

Die away from, from, die away (without the from). 

Reconciliation of opposites ; sober, drunk, all the same ! 

Good and evil reconciled in a laugh ! 

It escapes, it escapes! 

But 

What escapes, what escapes ? 

Emphasis, EMphasis; there must be some emphasis in order 
for there to be a phasis. 

No verbiage can give it, because the verbiage is other. 

/^coherent, coherent — same. 

And it fades ! And it 's infinite ! And it 's infinite ! 

If it was n't going, why should you hold on to it? 

Don't you see the difference, don't you see the identity ? 

Constantly opposites united ! 

The same me telling you to write and not to write ! 

Extreme — extreme, extreme ! Within the ^rtensity that 
' extreme ' contains is contained the ' extreme ' of zVztensity. 

Something, and other than that thing ! 

Intoxication, and otherness than intoxication. 

Every attempt at betterment, — every attempt at otherment, 
— is a . 

It fades forever and forever as we move. 



On some Hegelisms. 297 

There is a reconciliation ! 

Reconciliation — ^conciliation ! 

By God, how that hurts ! By God, how it does n't hurt ! 
Reconciliation of two extremes. 

By George, nothing but otMng ! 

That sounds like nonsense, but it is pure <?#sense ! 

Thought deeper than speech ! 

Medical school; divinity school, school! School! Oh my 
God, oh God, oh God ! 

The most coherent and articulate sentence which came was 
this : — 

There are no differences but differences of degree between 
different degrees of difference and no difference. 

This phrase has the true Hegelian ring, being in fact a regu- 
lar sich als sich auf sich selbst beziehende Negativitdt. And 
true Hegelians will uberhaupt be able to read between the 
lines and feel, at any rate, what possible ecstasies of cognitive 
emotion might have bathed these tattered fragments of thought 
when they were alive. But for the assurance of a certain 
amount of respect from them, I should hardly have ventured to 
print what must be such caviare to the general. 

But now comes the reverse of the medal. What is the 
principle of unity in all this monotonous rain of instances? 
Although I did not see it at first, I soon found that it was in 
each case nothing but the abstract genus of which the conflict- 
ing terms were opposite species. In other words, although the 
flood of ontologic emotion was Hegelian through and through, 
the ground for it was nothing but the world-old principle that 
things are the same only so far and no farther than they are 
the same, or partake of a common nature, — the principle that 
Hegel most tramples under foot. At the same time the rapture 
of beholding a process that was infinite, changed (as the nature 
of the infinitude was realized by the mind) into the sense of a 
dreadful and ineluctable fate, with whose magnitude every finite 
effort is incommensurable and in the light of which whatever 
happens is indifferent. This instantaneous revulsion of mood 
from rapture to horror is, perhaps, the strongest emotion I have 
ever experienced. I got it repeatedly when the inhalation was 
continued long enough to produce incipient nausea; and I can- 
not but regard it as the normal and inevitable outcome of the 



298 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

intoxication, if sufficiently prolonged. A pessimistic fatalism, 
depth within depth of impotence and indifference, reason and 
silliness united, not in a higher synthesis, but in the fact that 
whichever you choose it is all one, — this is the upshot of a reve- 
lation that began so rosy bright. 

Even when the process stops short of this ultimatum, the 
reader will have noticed from the phrases quoted how often it 
ends by losing the clue. Something 'fades,' 'escapes;' and 
the feeling of insight is changed into an intense one of be- 
wilderment, puzzle, confusion, astonishment. I know no more 
singular sensation than this intense bewilderment, with nothing 
particular left to be bewildered at save the bewilderment itself. 
It seems, indeed, a causa sm, or 'spirit become its own object.' 

My conclusion is that the togetherness of things in a com- 
mon world, the law of sharing, of which I have said so much, 
may, when perceived, engender a very powerful emotion ; that 
Hegel was so unusually susceptible to this emotion throughout 
his life that its gratification became his supreme end, and made 
him tolerably unscrupulous as to the means he employed; that 
indifferentism is the true outcome of every view of the world 
which makes infinity and continuity to be its essence, and that 
pessimistic or optimistic attitudes pertain to the mere accidental 
subjectivity of the moment; finally, that the identification of 
contradictories, so far from being the self-developing process 
which Hegel supposes, is really a self -consuming process, pass- 
ing from the less to the more abstract, and terminating either in 
a laugh at the ultimate nothingness, or in a mood of vertiginous 
amazement at a meaningless infinity. 



Psychical Research. 299 



WHAT PSYCHICAL RESEARCH HAS 
ACCOMPLISHED. 1 

" r I ^HE great field for new discoveries," said a 
JL scientific friend to me the other day, " is 
always the unclassified residuum." Round about the 
accredited and orderly facts of every science there 
ever floats a sort of dust-cloud of exceptional obser- 
vations, of occurrences minute and irregular and sel- 
dom met with, which it always proves more easy to 
ignore than to attend to. The ideal of every science 
is that of a closed and completed system of truth. 
The charm of most sciences to their more passive 
disciples consists in their appearing, in fact, to wear 
just this ideal form. Each one of our various ologies 
seems to offer a definite head of classification for 
every possible phenomenon of the sort which it pro- 
fesses to cover; and so far from free is most men's 
fancy, that, when a consistent and organized scheme 
of this sort has once been comprehended and assimi- 
lated, a different scheme is unimaginable. No alter- 
native, whether to whole or parts, can any longer 
be conceived as possible. Phenomena unclassifiable 
within the system are therefore paradoxical absurdi- 

1 This Essay is formed of portions of an article in Scribner's 
Magazine for March, 1890, of an article in the Forum for July, 1892, 
and of the President's Address before the Society for Psychical 
Research, published in the Proceedings for June, 1896, and in 
Science. 



300 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

ties, and must be held untrue. When, moreover, as 
so often happens, the reports of them are vague and 
indirect; when they come as mere marvels and od- 
dities rather than as things of serious moment, — one 
neglects or denies them with the best of scientific 
consciences. Only the born geniuses let themselves 
be worried and fascinated by these outstanding ex- 
ceptions, and get no peace till they are brought 
within the fold. Your Galileos, Galvanis, Fresnels, 
Purkinjes, and Darwins are always getting confounded 
and troubled by insignificant things. Any one will 
renovate his science who will steadily look after the 
irregular phenomena. And when the science is re- 
newed, its new formulas often have more of the voice 
of the exceptions in them than of what were supposed 
to be the rules. 

No part of the unclassified residuum has usually 
been treated with a more contemptuous scientific 
disregard than the mass of phenomena generally 
called mystical. Physiology will have nothing to 
do with them. Orthodox psychology turns its back 
upon them. Medicine sweeps them out; or, at most, 
when in an anecdotal vein, records a few of them as 
' effects of the imagination,' — a phrase of mere dis- 
missal, whose meaning, in this connection, it is impos- 
sible to make precise. All the while, however, the 
phenomena are there, lying broadcast over the surface 
of history. No matter where you open its pages, 
you find things recorded under the name of divina- 
tions, inspirations, demoniacal possessions, apparitions, 
trances, ecstasies, miraculous healings and produc- 
tions of disease, and occult powers possessed by 
peculiar individuals over persons and things in their 
neighborhood. We suppose that ' mediumship ' origi- 



Psychical Research. 301 

nated in Rochester, N. Y., and animal magnetism 
with Mesmer; but once look behind the pages of 
official history, in personal memoirs, legal documents, 
and popular narratives and books of anecdote, and 
you will find that there never was a time when these 
things were not reported just as abundantly as now. 
We college-bred gentry, who follow the stream of 
cosmopolitan culture exclusively, not infrequently 
stumble upon some old-established journal, or some 
voluminous native author, whose names are never \ 
heard of in our circle, but who number their readers 
by the quarter-million. It always gives us a little 
shock to find this mass of human beings not only 
living and ignoring us and all our gods, but actually 
reading and writing and cogitating without ever a 
thought of our canons and authorities. Well, a pub- 
lic no less large keeps and transmits from generation 
to generation the traditions and practices of the 
occult; but academic science cares as little for its 
beliefs and opinions as you, gentle reader, care for 
those of the readers of the Waverley and the Fireside 
Companion. To no one type of mind is it given to 
discern the totality of truth. Something escapes the 
best of us, — not accidentally, but systematically, and 
because we have a twist. The scientific-academic 
mind and the feminine-mystical mind shy from each 
other's facts, just as they fly from each other's temper 
and spirit. Facts are there only for those who have 
a mental affinity with them. When once they are 
indisputably ascertained and admitted, the academic 
and critical minds are by far the best fitted ones to 
interpret and discuss them, — for surely to pass from 
mystical to scientific speculations is like passing from 
lunacy to sanity ; but on the other hand if there is 



302 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

anything which human history demonstrates, it is the 
extreme slowness with which the ordinary academic 
and critical mind acknowledges facts to exist which 
present themselves as wild facts, with no stall or 
pigeon-hole, or as facts which threaten to break up 
the accepted system. In psychology, physiology, 
and medicine, wherever a debate between the mystics 
and the scientifics has been once for all decided, it 
is the mystics who have usually proved to be right 
about the facts, while the scientifics had the better of 
it in respect to the theories. The most recent and 
flagrant example of this is ' animal magnetism,' whose 
facts were stoutly dismissed as a pack of lies by 
academic medical science the world over, until the 
non-mystical theory of ' hypnotic suggestion ' was 
found for them, — when they were admitted to be 
so excessively and dangerously common that special 
penal laws, forsooth, must be passed to keep all per- 
sons unequipped with medical diplomas from taking 
part in their production. Just so stigmatizations, invul- 
nerabilities, instantaneous cures, inspired discourses, 
and demoniacal possessions, the records of which 
were shelved in our libraries but yesterday in the 
alcove headed ' superstitions,' now, under the brand- 
new title of ' cases of hystero-epilepsy,' are repub- 
lished, reobserved, and reported with an even too 
credulous avidity. 

Repugnant as the mystical style of philosophizing 
may be (especially when self-complacent), there is no 
sort of doubt that it goes with a gift for meeting with 
certain kinds of phenomenal experience. The writer 
of these pages has been forced in the past few years 
to this admission ; and he now believes that he who 
will pay attention to facts of the sort dear to mystics. 



Psychical Research. 303 

while reflecting upon them in academic-scientific ways, 
will be in the best possible position to help philoso- 
phy. It is a circumstance of good augury that cer- 
tain scientifically trained minds in all countries seem 
drifting to the same conclusion. The Society for 
Psychical Research has been one means of bringing 
science and the occult together in England and 
America; and believing that this Society fulfils a 
function which, though limited, is destined to be not 
unimportant in the organization of human knowl- 
edge, I am glad to give a brief account of it to the 
uninstructed reader. 

According to the newspaper and drawing-room 
myth, soft-headedness and idiotic credulity are the 
bond of sympathy in this Society, and general won- 
der-sickness its dynamic principle. A glance at the 
membership fails, however, to corroborate this view. 
The president is Prof. Henry Sidgwick, 1 known by 
his other deeds as the most incorrigibly and exasper- 
atingly critical and sceptical mind in England. The 
hard-headed Arthur Balfour is one vice-president, and 
the hard-headed Prof. J. P. Langley, secretary of the 
Smithsonian Institution, is another. Such men as 
Professor Lodge, the eminent English physicist, and 
Professor Richet, the eminent French physiologist, 
are among the most active contributors to the Soci- 
ety's Proceedings; and through the catalogue of 
membership are sprinkled names honored through- 
out the world for their scientific capacity. In fact, 
were I asked to point to a scientific journal where 
hard-headedness and never-sleeping suspicion of 
sources of error might be seen in their full bloom, 

1 Written in 1891. Since then, Mr. Balfour, the present writer, 
aad Professor William Crookes have held the presidential office. 



304 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

I think I should have to fall back on the Proceed- 
ings of the Society for Psychical Research. The 
common run of papers, say on physiological subjects, 
which one finds in other professional organs, are apt 
to show a far lower level of critical consciousness. 
Indeed, the rigorous canons of evidence applied a 
few years ago to testimony in the case of certain 
' mediums ' led to the secession from the Society of a 
number of spiritualists. Messrs. Stainton Moses and 
A. R. Wallace, among others, thought that no expe- 
riences based on mere eyesight could ever have a 
chance to be admitted as true, if such an impossibly 
exacting standard of proof were insisted on in every 
case. 

The S. P. R., as I shall call it for convenience, was 
founded in 1882 by a number of gentlemen, foremost 
among whom seem to have been Professors Sidgwick, 
W. F. Barrett, and Balfour Stewart, and Messrs. R. H. 
Hutton, Hensleigh Wedgwood, Edmund Gurney, and 
F. W. H. Myers. Their purpose was twofold, — first, 
to carry on systematic experimentation with hypno- 
tic subjects, mediums, clairvoyants, and others; and, 
secondly, to collect evidence concerning apparitions, 
haunted houses, and similar phenomena which are 
incidentally reported, but which, from their fugitive 
character, admit of no deliberate control. Professor 
Sidgwick, in his introductory address, insisted that 
the divided state of public opinion on all these mat- 
ters was a scandal to science, — absolute disdain on' 
a priori grounds characterizing what may be called 
professional opinion, while indiscriminate credulity 
was too often found among those who pretended to 
have a first-hand acquaintance with the facts. 

As a sort of weather bureau for accumulating 



Psychical Research. 305 

reports of such meteoric phenomena as apparitions, 
the S. P. R. has done an immense amount of work. 
As an experimenting body, it cannot be said to 
have completely fulfilled the hopes of its founders. 
The reasons for this lie in two circumstances : first, 
the clairvoyant and other subjects who will allow 
themselves to be experimented upon are few and far 
between ; and, secondly, work with them takes an im- 
mense amount of time, and has had to be carried on at 
odd intervals by members engaged in other pursuits. 
The Society has not yet been rich enough to control 
the undivided services of skilled experimenters in this 
difficult field. The loss of the lamented Edmund 
Gurney, who more than any one else had leisure to 
devote, has been so far irreparable. But were there 
no experimental work at all, and were the S. P. R. 
nothing but a weather-bureau for catching sporadic 
apparitions, etc., in their freshness, I am disposed to 
think its function indispensable in the scientific or- 
ganism. If any one of my readers, spurred by the 
thought that so much smoke must needs betoken fire, 
has ever looked into the existing literature of the 
supernatural for proof, he will know what I mean. 
This literature is enormous, but it is practically 
worthless for evidential purposes. Facts enough are 
cited, indeed ; but the records of them are so fallible 
and imperfect that at most they lead to the opinion 
that it may be well to keep a window open upon that 
quarter in one's mind. 

In the S. P. R.'s Proceedings, on the contrary, 3 
different law prevails. Quality, and not mere quan- 
tity, is what has been mainly kept in mind. The wit- 
nesses, where possible, have in every reported case 
been cross-examined personally, the collateral facts 



306 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

have been looked up, and the story appears with its 
precise coefficient of evidential worth stamped on it, 
so that all may know just what its weight as proof may 
be. Outside of these Proceedings, I know of no sys- 
tematic attempt to weigh the evidence for the super- 
natural. This makes the value of the volumes already 
published unique ; and I firmly believe that as the 
years go on and the ground covered grows still wider, 
the Proceedings will more and more tend to super- 
sede all other sources of information concerning phe- 
nomena traditionally deemed occult. Collections of 
this sort are usually best appreciated by the rising 
generation. The young anthropologists and psychol- 
ogists who will soon have full occupancy of the stage 
will feel how great a scientific scandal it has been to 
leave a great mass of human experience to take its 
chances between vague tradition and credulity on the 
one hand and dogmatic denial at long range on the 
other, with no body of persons extant who are willing 
and competent to study the matter with both patience 
and rigor. If the Society lives long enough for the 
public to become familiar with its presence, so that 
any apparition, or house or person infested with un- 
accountable noises or disturbances of material objects, 
will as a matter of course be reported to its officers, we 
shall doubtless end by having a mass of facts concrete 
enough to theorize upon. Its sustainers, therefore, 
should accustom themselves to the idea that its first 
duty is simply to exist from year to year and perform 
this recording function well, though no conclusive 
results of any sort emerge at first. All our learned 
societies have begun in some such modest way. 

But one cannot by mere outward organization make 
much progress in matters scientific. Societies can 



Psychical Research. 307 

back men of genius, but can never take their place. 
The contrast between the parent Society and the 
American Branch illustrates this. In England, a little 
group of men with enthusiasm and genius for the 
work supplied the nucleus; in this country, Mr. 
Hodgson had to be imported from Europe before 
any tangible progress was made. What perhaps more 
than anything else has held the Society together in 
England is Professor Sidgwick's extraordinary gift of 
inspiring confidence in diverse sorts of people. Such 
tenacity of interest in the result and such absolute 
impartiality in discussing the evidence are not once 
in a century found in an individual. His obstinate 
belief that there is something yet to be brought to 
light communicates patience to the discouraged ; his 
constitutional inability to draw any precipitate con- 
clusion reassures those who are afraid of being dupes. 
Mrs. Sidgwick — a sister, by the way, of the great 
Arthur Balfour — is a worthy ally of her husband in 
this matter, showing a similarly rare power of hold- 
ing her judgment in suspense, and a keenness of 
observation and capacity for experimenting with 
human subjects which are rare in either sex. 

The worker of the Society, as originally constituted, 
was Edmund Gurney. Gurney was a man of the 
rarest sympathies and gifts. Although, like Carlyle, 
he used to groan under the burden of his labors, he 
yet exhibited a colossal power of dispatching business 
and getting through drudgery of the most repulsive 
kind. His two thick volumes on ' Phantasms of the 
Living,' collected and published in three years, are a 
proof of this. Besides this, he had exquisite artistic 
instincts, and his massive volume on ' The Power of 
Sound' was, when it appeared, the most important 



308 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

work on aesthetics in the English language. He had 
also the tenderest heart and a mind of rare meta- 
physical power, as his volumes of essays, 'Tertium 
Quid,' will prove to any reader. Mr. Frederic Myers, 
already well known as one of the most brilliant of 
English essayists, is the ingenium prcefervidum of 
the S. P. R. Of the value of Mr. Myers's theoretic 
writings I will say a word later. Dr. Hodgson, the 
American secretary, is distinguished by a balance of 
mind almost as rare in its way as Sidgwick's. He is 
persuaded of the reality of many of the phenomena 
called spiritualistic, but he also has uncommon keen- 
ness in detecting error ; and it is impossible to say in 
advance whether it will give him more satisfaction 
to confirm or to smash a given case offered to his 
examination. 

It is now time to cast a brief look upon the actual 
contents of these Proceedings. The first two years 
were largely taken up with experiments in thought- 
transference. The earliest lot of these were made 
with the daughters of a clergyman named Creery, and 
convinced Messrs. Balfour Stewart, Barrett, Myers, and 
Gurney that the girls had an inexplicable power of 
guessing names and objects thought of by other per- 
sons. Two years later, Mrs. Sidgwickand Mr. Gurney, 
recommencing experiments with the same girls, de- 
tected them signalling to each other. It is true that 
for the most part the conditions of the earlier series 
had excluded signalling, and it is also possible that the 
cheating may have grafted itself on what was origi- 
nally a genuine phenomenon. Yet Gurney was wise 
in abandoning the entire series to the scepticism of the 
reader. Many critics of the S. P. R. seem out of all 



Psychical Research. 309 

its labors to have heard only of this case. But there 
are experiments recorded with upwards of thirty other 
subjects. Three were experimented upon at great 
length during the first two years: one was Mr. G. A. 
Smith ; the other two were young ladies in Liverpool 
in the employment of Mr. Malcolm Guthrie. 

It is the opinion of all who took part in these lat- 
ter experiments that sources of conscious and uncon- 
scious deception were sufficiently excluded, and that 
the large percentage of correct reproductions by the 
subjects of words, diagrams, and sensations occupying 
other persons' consciousness were entirely inexplicable 
as results of chance. The witnesses of these per- 
formances were in fact all so satisfied of the genuine- 
ness of the phenomena, that ' telepathy ' has figured 
freely in the papers of the Proceedings and in Gur- 
ney's book on Phantasms as a vera causa on which 
additional hypotheses might be built. No mere 
reader can be blamed, however, if he demand, for so 
revolutionary a belief, a more overwhelming bulk of 
testimony than has yet been supplied. Any day, of 
course, may bring in fresh experiments in successful 
picture-guessing. But meanwhile, and lacking that, we 
can only point out that the present data are strength- 
ened in the flank, so to speak, by all observations that 
tend to corroborate the possibility of other kindred 
phenomena, such as telepathic impression, clairvoy- 
ance, or what is called ' test-mediumship.' The wider 
genus will naturally cover the narrower species with 
its credit. 

Gurney's papers on hypnotism must be mentioned 
next. Some of them are less concerned with estab- 
lishing new facts than with analyzing old ones. But 
omitting these, we find that in the line of pure obser- 



310 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

vation Gurney claims to have ascertained in more 
than one subject the following phenomenon : The 
subject's hands are thrust through a blanket, which 
screens the operator from his eyes, and his mind is 
absorbed in conversation with a third person. The 
operator meanwhile points with his finger to one of 
the fingers of the subject, which finger alone responds 
to this silent selection by becoming stiff or anaes- 
thetic, as the case may be. The interpretation is 
difficult, but the phenomenon, which I have myself 
witnessed, seems authentic. 

Another observation made by Gurney seems to 
prove the possibility of the subject's mind being 
directly influenced by the operator's. The hyp- 
notized subject responds, or fails to respond, to 
questions asked by a third party according to the 
operator's silent permission or refusal. Of course, 
in these experiments all obvious sources of deception 
were excluded. But Gurney's most important con- 
tribution to our knowledge of hypnotism was his 
series of experiments on the automatic writing of 
subjects who had received post-hypnotic suggestions. 
For example, a subject during trance is told that he 
will poke the fire in six minutes after waking. On 
being waked he has no memory of the order, but 
while he is engaged in conversation his hand is placed 
on a planchette, which immediately writes the sen- 
tence, " P., you will poke the fire in six minutes." 
Experiments like this, which were repeated in great 
variety, seem to prove that below the upper con- 
sciousness the hypnotic consciousness persists, en- 
| grossed with the suggestion and able to express itself 
through the involuntarily moving hand. 

Gurney shares, therefore, with Janet and Binet, the 



Psychical Research. 311 

credit of demonstrating the simultaneous existence of 
two different strata of consciousness, ignorant of each 
other, in the same person. The ' extra-consciousness/ 
as one may call it, can be kept on tap, as it were, by the 
method of automatic writing. This discovery marks 
a new era in experimental psychology, and it is impos- 
sible to overrate its importance. But Gurney's great- 
est piece of work is his laborious ' Phantasms of the 
Living.' As an example of the drudgery stowed away 
in the volumes, it may suffice to say that in looking 
up the proofs for the alleged physical phenomena of 
witchcraft, Gurney reports a careful search through 
two hundred and sixty books on the subject, with the 
result of finding no first-hand evidence recorded in 
the trials except the confessions of the victims them- 
selves ; and these, of course, are presumptively due 
to either torture or hallucination. This statement, 
made in an unobtrusive note, is only one instance of 
the care displayed throughout the volumes. In the 
course of these, Gurney discusses about seven hun- 
dred cases of apparitions which he collected. A large 
number of these were ' veridical,' in the sense of coin- 
ciding with some calamity happening to the person 
who appeared. Gurney's explanation is that the mind 
of the person undergoing the calamity was at that 
moment able to impress the mind of the percipient 
with an hallucination. 

Apparitions, on this ' telepathic ' theory, may be 
called/ objective ' facts, although they are not ' mate- 
rial ' facts. In order to test the likelihood of such 
veridical hallucinations being due to mere chance, 
Gurney instituted the ' census of hallucinations,' which 
has been continued with the result of obtaining an- 
swers from over twenty-five thousand persons, asked 



312 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

at random in different countries whether, when in 
good health and awake, they had ever heard a voice, 
seen a form, or felt a touch which no material pres- 
ence could account for. The result seems to be, 
roughly speaking, that in England about one adult 
in ten has had such an experience at least once in his 
life, and that of the experiences themselves a large 
number coincide with some distant event. The ques- 
tion is, Is the frequency of these latter cases too great 
to be deemed fortuitous, and must we suppose an oc- 
cult connection between the two events? Mr. and 
Mrs. Sidgwick have worked out this problem on the 
basis of the English returns, seventeen thousand in 
number, with a care and thoroughness that leave 
nothing to be desired. Their conclusion is that the 
cases where the apparition of a person is seen on the 
day of his death are four hundred and forty times too 
numerous to be ascribed to chance. The reasoning 
employed to calculate this number is simple enough. 
If there be only a fortuitous connection between the 
death of an individual and the occurrence of his ap- 
parition to some one at a distance, the death is no 
more likely to fall on the same day as the apparition 
than it is to occur on the same day with any other 
event in nature. But the chance-probability that any 
individual's death will fall on any given day marked 
in advance by some other event is just equal to the 
chance-probability that the individual will die at all 
on any specified day; and the national death-rate 
gives that probability as one in nineteen thousand. 
If, then, when the death of a person coincides with 
an apparition of the same person, the coincidence be 
merely fortuitous, it ought not to occur oftener than 
once in nineteen thousand cases. As a matter of fact, 



Psychical Research. 313 

however, it does occur (according to the census) once 
in forty-three cases, a number (as aforesaid) four hun- 
dred and forty times too great. The American census, 
of some seven thousand answers, gives a remarkably 
similar result. Against this conclusion the only ra- 
tional answer that I can see is that the data are still 
too few ; that the net was not cast wide enough ; 
and that we need, to get fair averages, far more than 
twenty-four thousand answers to the census question. 
This may, of course, be true, though it seems exceed- 
ingly unlikely ; and in our own twenty-four thousand 
answers veridical cases may possibly have heaped 
themselves unduly. 

The next topic worth mentioning in the Proceed- 
ings is the discussion of the physical phenomena of 
mediumship (slate-writing, furniture-moving, and so 
forth) by Mrs. Sidgwick, Mr. Hodgson, and ' Mr. 
Davey.' This, so far as it goes, is destructive of the 
claims of all the mediums examined. ' Mr. Davey ' 
himself produced fraudulent slate-writing of the high- 
est order, while Mr. Hodgson, a ' sitter ' in his confi- 
dence, reviewed the written reports of the series of 
his other sitters, — all of them intelligent persons, — 
and showed that in every case they failed to see the 
essential features of what was done before their eyes. 
This Davey-Hodgson contribution is probably the 
most damaging document concerning eye-witnesses' 
evidence that has ever been produced. Another sub- 
stantial bit of work based on personal observation is 
Mr. Hodgson's report on Madame Blavatsky's claims 
to physical mediumship. This is adverse to the lady's 
pretensions ; and although some of Madame Blavat- 
sky's friends make light of it, it is a stroke from which 
her reputation will not recover. 



314 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

Physical mediumship in all its phases has fared hard 
in the Proceedings. The latest case reported on is 
that of the famous Eusapia Paladino, who being de- 
tected in fraud at Cambridge, after a brilliant career 
of success on the continent, has, according to the 
draconian rules of method which govern the Society, 
been ruled out from a further hearing. The case of 
Stainton Moses, on the other hand, concerning which 
Mr. Myers has brought out a mass of unpublished 
testimony, seems to escape from the universal con- 
demnation, and appears to force upon us what Mr. 
Andrew Lang calls the choice between a moral and 
a physical miracle. 

In the case of Mrs. Piper, not a physical but a trance 
medium, we seem to have no choice offered at all. 
Mr. Hodgson and others have made prolonged study 
of this lady's trances, and are all convinced that super- 
normal powers of cognition are displayed therein. 
These are prima facie due to ' spirit-control.' But the 
conditions are so complex that a dogmatic decision 
either for or against the spirit-hypothesis must as yet 
be postponed. 

One of the most important experimental contribu- 
tions to the Proceedings is the article of Miss X. on 
' Crystal Vision.' Many persons who look fixedly into 
a crystal or other vaguely luminous surface fall into a 
kind of daze, and see visions. Miss X. has this sus- 
ceptibility in a remarkable degree, and is, moreover, 
an unusually intelligent critic. She reports many vis- 
ions which can only be described as apparently clair- 
voyant, and others which beautifully fill a vacant niche 
in our knowledge of subconscious mental operations. 
For example, looking into the crystal before breakfast 
one morning she reads in printed characters of the 



Psychical Research. 315 

death of a lady of her acquaintance, the date and other 
circumstances all duly appearing in type. Startled by 
this, she looks at the ' Times ' of the previous day for 
verification, and there among the deaths are the iden- 
tical words which she has seen. On the same page 
of the Times are other items which she remembers 
reading the day before ; and the only explanation 
seems to be that her eyes then inattentively ob- 
served, so to speak, the death-item, which forthwith 
fell into a special corner of her memory, and came 
out as a visual hallucination when the peculiar mod- 
ification of consciousness induced by the crystal- 
gazing set in. 

Passing from papers based on observation to papers 
based on narrative, we have a number of ghost stories, 
etc., sifted by Mrs. Sidgwick and discussed by Messrs. 
Myers and Podmore. They form the best ghost liter- 
ature I know of from the point of view of emotional 
interest. As to the conclusions drawn, Mrs. Sidg- 
wick is rigorously non-committal, while Mr. Myers 
and Mr. Podmore show themselves respectively hos- 
pitable and inhospitable to the notion that such stories 
have a basis of objectivity dependent on the contin- 
ued existence of the dead. 

I must close my gossip about the Proceedings by 
naming what, after all, seems to me the most import- 
ant part of its contents. This is the long series of 
articles by Mr. Myers on what he now calls the ' sub- 
liminal self,' or what one might designate as ultra- 
marginal consciousness. The result of Myers's learned 
and ingenious studies in hypnotism, hallucinations, 
automatic writing, mediumship, and the whole series 
of allied phenomena is a conviction which he ex- 
presses in the following terms : — 



3 16 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

" Each of us is in reality an abiding psychical entity far 
more extensive than he knows, — an individuality which can 
never express itself completely through any corporeal mani- 
festation. The self manifests itself through the organism ; 
but there is always some part of the self unmanifested, and 
always, as it seems, some power of organic expression in 
abeyance or reserve." 

The ordinary consciousness Mr. Myers likens to the 
visible part of the solar spectrum ; the total conscious- 
ness is like that spectrum prolonged by the inclusion 
of the ultra-red and ultra-violet rays. In the psychic 
spectrum the ' ultra ' parts may embrace a far wider 
range, both of physiological and of psychical activity, 
than is open to our ordinary consciousness and mem- 
ory. At the lower end we have the physiological ex- 
tension, mind-cures, ' stigmatization ' of ecstatics, etc. ; 
in the upper, the hyper-normal cognitions of the me- 
dium-trance. Whatever the judgment of the future 
may be on Mr. Myers's speculations, the credit will 
always remain to them of being the first attempt in 
any language to consider the phenomena of halluci- 
nation, hypnotism, automatism, double personality, 
and mediumship as connected parts of one whole 
subject. All constructions in this field must be pro- 
visional, and it is as something provisional that Mr. 
Myers offers us his formulations. But, thanks to him, 
we begin to see for the first time what a vast inter- 
locked and graded system these phenomena, from 
the rudest motor-automatisms to the most startling 
sensory-apparition, form. Quite apart from Mr. 
Myers's conclusions, his methodical treatment of 
them by classes and series is the first great step 
toward overcoming the distaste of orthodox science 
to look at them at all. 



Psychical Research. 317 

One's reaction on hearsay testimony is always 
determined by one's own experience. Most men 
who have once convinced themselves, by what seems 
to them a careful examination, that any one species 
of the supernatural exists, begin to relax their vigi- 
lance as to evidence, and throw the doors of their 
minds more or less wide open to the supernatural 
along its whole extent. To a mind that has thus made 
its salto mortale, the minute work over insignificant 
cases and quiddling discussion of ' evidential values,' 
of which the Society's reports are full, seems insuffer- 
ably tedious. And it is so ; few species of literature 
are more truly dull than reports of phantasms. Taken 
simply by themselves, as separate facts to stare at, 
they appear so devoid of meaning and sweep, that, 
even were they certainly true, one would be tempted 
to leave them out of one's universe for being so 
idiotic. Every other sort of fact has some context 
and continuity with the rest of nature. These alone 
are contextless and discontinuous. 

Hence I think that the sort of loathing — no milder 
word will do — which the very words ' psychical re- 
search ' and ' psychical researcher ' awaken in so many 
honest scientific breasts is not only natural, but in a 
sense praiseworthy. A man who is unable himself to 
conceive of any orbit for these mental meteors can 
only suppose that Messrs. Gurney, Myers, & Co.'s 
mood in dealing with them must be that of silly mar- 
velling at so many detached prodigies. And such 
prodigies ! So science simply falls back on her gen- 
eral non-possumns ; and most of the would-be critics 
of the Proceedings have been contented to oppose 
to the phenomena recorded the simple presumption 
that in some way or other the reports must be fal- 



3 1 8 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

lacious, — for so far as the order of nature has been 
subjected to really scientific scrutiny, it always has 
been proved to run the other way. But the oftener 
one is forced to reject an alleged sort of fact by the 
use of this mere presumption, the weaker does the 
presumption itself get to be ; and one might in course 
of time use up one's presumptive privileges in this 
way, even though one started (as our anti-telepathists 
do) with as good a case as the great induction of 
psychology that all our knowledge comes by the use 
of our eyes and ears and other senses. And we must 
remember also that this undermining of the strength 
of a presumption by reiterated report of facts to the 
contrary does not logically require that the facts in 
question should all be well proved. A lot of rumors 
in the air against a business man's credit, though they 
might all be vague, and no one of them amount to 
proof that he is unsound, would certainly weaken the 
presumption of his soundness. And all the more 
would they have this effect if they formed what Gurney 
called a fagot and not a chain, — that is, if they were 
independent of one another, and came from different 
quarters. Now, the evidence for telepathy, weak and 
strong, taken just as it comes, forms a fagot and not a 
chain. No one item cites the content of another item 
as part of its own proof. But taken together the items 
have a certain general consistency ; there is a method 
in their madness, so to speak. So each of them adds 
presumptive value to the lot; and cumulatively, as no 
candid mind can fail to see, they subtract presumptive 
force from the orthodox belief that there can be noth- 
ing in any one's intellect that has not come in through 
ordinary experiences of sense. 

But it is a miserable thing for a question of truth 



Psychical Research. 319 

to be confined to mere presumption and counter- 
presumption, with no decisive thunderbolt of fact to 
clear the baffling darkness. And, sooth to say, in 
talking so much of the merely presumption-weaken- 
ing value of our records, I have myself been wilfully 
taking the point of view of the so-called ( rigorously 
scientific* disbeliever, and making an ad hominem 
plea. My own point of view is different. For me 
the thunderbolt has fallen, and the orthodox belief 
has not merely had its presumption weakened, but 
the truth itself of the belief is decisively overthrown. 
If I may employ the language of the professional 
logic-shop, a universal proposition can be made un- 
true by a particular instance. If you wish to upset 
the law that all crows are black, you must not 
seek to show that no crows are ; it is enough if you 
prove one single crow to be white. My own white 
crow is Mrs. Piper. In the trances of this medium, I 
cannot resist the conviction that knowledge appears 
which she has never gained by the ordinary waking 
use of her eyes and ears and wits. What the source 
of this knowledge may be I know not, and have not 
the glimmer of an explanatory suggestion to make ; 
but from admitting the fact of such knowledge I can 
see no escape. So when I turn to the rest of the 
evidence, ghosts and all, I cannot carry with me the 
irreversibly negative bias of the ' rigorously scientific ' 
mind, with its presumption as to what the true order 
of nature ought to be. I feel as if, though the evi- 
dence be flimsy in spots, it may nevertheless collec- 
tively carry heavy weight. The rigorously scientific 
mind may, in truth, easily overshoot the mark. 
Science means, first of all, a certain dispassionate 
method. To suppose that it means a certain set of 



320 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

results that one should pin one's faith upon and hug 
forever is sadly to mistake its genius, and degrades 
the scientific body to the status of a sect. 

We all, scientists and non-scientists, live on some 
inclined plane of credulity. The plane tips one 
way in one man, another way in another; and may 
he whose plane tips in no way be the first to cast a 
stone ! As a matter of fact, the trances I speak of 
have broken down for my own mind the limits of the 
admitted order of nature. Science, so far as science 
denies such exceptional occurrences, lies prostrate in 
the dust for me; and the most urgent intellectual 
need which I feel at present is that science be built 
up again in a form in which such things may have a 
positive place. Science, like life, feeds on its own de- 
cay. New facts burst old rules ; then newly divined 
conceptions bind old and new together into a recon- 
ciling law. 

And here is the real instructiveness of Messrs. 
Myers and Gurney's work. They are trying with the 
utmost conscientiousness to find a reconciling con- 
ception which shall subject the old laws of nature 
to the smallest possible strain. Mr. Myers uses that 
method of gradual approach which has performed 
such wonders in Darwin's hands. When Darwin met 
a fact which seemed a poser to his theory, his regular 
custom, as I have heard an able colleague say, was 
to fill in all round it with smaller facts, as a wagoner 
might heap dirt round a big rock in the road, and 
thus get his team over without upsetting. So Mr. 
Myers, starting from the most ordinary facts of inat- 
tentive consciousness, follows this clue through a 
long series which terminates in ghosts, and seeks to 
show that these are but extreme manifestations of a 



Psychical Research. 321 

common truth, — the truth that the invisible segments 
of our minds are susceptible, under rarely realized 
conditions, of acting and being acted upon by the in- 
visible segments of other conscious lives. This may 
not be ultimately true (for the theosophists, with their 
astral bodies and the like, may, for aught I now know, 
prove to be on the correcter trail), but no one can 
deny that it is in good scientific form, — for science 
always takes a known kind of phenomenon, and tries 
to extend its range. 

I have myself, as American agent for the census, / 
collected hundreds of cases of hallucination in healthy 
persons. The result is to make me feel that we all 
have potentially a ' subliminal' self, which may make 
at any time irruption into our ordinary lives. At its 
lowest, it is only the depository of our forgotten 
memories ; at its highest, we do not know what it is 
at all. Take, for instance, a series of cases. During 
sleep, many persons have something in them which 
measures the flight of time better than the waking 
self does. It wakes them at a preappointed hour; 
it acquaints them with the moment when they first 
awake. It may produce an hallucination, — as in a 
lady who informs me that at the instant of waking 
she has a vision of her watch-face with the hands 
pointing (as she has often verified) to the exact time. 
It may be the feeling that some physiological period 
has elapsed ; but, whatever it is, it is subconscious. 

A subconscious something may also preserve ex- 
periences to which we do not openly attend. A 
lady taking her lunch in town finds herself without 
her purse. Instantly a sense comes over her of rising 
from the breakfast-table and hearing her purse drop 
upon the floor. On reaching home she finds noth- 

21 



322 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

ing under the table, but summons the servant to 
say where she has put the purse. The servant pro- 
duces it, saying: " How did you know where it was? 
You rose and left the room as if you did n't know 
you 'd dropped it." The same subconscious some- 
thing may recollect what we have forgotten. A lady 
accustomed to taking salicylate of soda for muscular 
rheumatism wakes one early winter morning with an 
aching neck. In the twilight she takes what she sup- 
poses to be her customary powder from a drawer, dis- 
solves it in a glass of water, and is about to drink it 
down, when she feels a sharp slap on her shoulder and 
hears a voice in her ear saying, " Taste it ! " On ex- 
amination, she finds she has got a morphine powder 
by mistake. The natural interpretation is that a sleep- 
ing memory of the morphine powders awoke in this 
quasi-explosive way. A like explanation offers itself 
as most plausible for the following case : A lady, with 
little time to catch the train, and the expressman 
about to call, is excitedly looking for the lost key of a 
packed trunk. Hurrying upstairs with a bunch of 
keys, proved useless, in her hand, she hears an 
' objective ' voice distinctly say, " Try the key of the 
cake-box." Being tried, it fits. This also may well 
have been the effect of forgotten experience. 

Now, the effect is doubtless due to the same hallu- 
cinatory mechanism ; but the source is less easily as- 
signed as we ascend the scale of cases. A lady, for 
instance, goes after breakfast to see about one of her 
servants who has become ill over night. She is 
startled at distinctly reading over the bedroom door 
in gilt letters the word ' small-pox.' The doctor is 
sent for, and ere long pronounces small-pox to be 
the disease, although the lady says, " The thought of 



Psychical Research. 323 

the girl's having small-pox never entered my mind 
till I saw the apparent inscription." Then come 
other cases of warning ; for example, that of a youth 
sitting in a wagon under a shed, who suddenly hears 
his dead mother's voice say, " Stephen, get away from 
here quick ! " and jumps out just in time to see the 
shed-roof fall. 

After this come the experiences of persons appear- 
ing to distant friends at or near the hour of death. 
Then, too, we have the trance-visions and utterances, 
which may appear astonishingly profuse and continu- 
ous, and maintain a fairly high intellectual level. For 
all these higher phenomena, it seems to me that while 
the proximate mechanism is that of ' hallucination/ it 
is straining an hypothesis unduly to name any ordinary 
subconscious mental operation — such as expectation, 
recollection, or inference from inattentive perception 
— as the ultimate cause that starts it up. It is far 
better tactics, if you wish to get rid of mystery, to 
brand the narratives themselves as unworthy of trust. 
The trustworthiness of most of them is to my own 
mind far from proved. And yet in the light of the 
medium-trance, which is proved, it seems as if they 
might well all be members of a natural kind of fact of 
which we do not yet know the full extent. 

Thousands of sensitive organizations in the United 
States to-day live as steadily in the light of these 
experiences, and are as indifferent to modern sci- 
ence, as if they lived in Bohemia in the twelfth cen- 
tury. They are indifferent to science, because sci- 
ence is so callously indifferent to their experiences. 
Although in its essence science only stands for a 
method and for no- fixed belief, yet as habitually 
taken, both by its votaries and outsiders, it is identi- 



324 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

fied with a certain fixed belief, — the belief that the 
hidden order of nature is mechanical exclusively, and 
that non-mechanical categories are irrational ways of 
conceiving and explaining even such things as human 
life. Now, this mechanical rationalism, as one may 
call it, makes, if it becomes one's only way of think- 
ing, a violent breach with the ways of thinking that 
have played the greatest part in human history. Re- 
ligious thinking, ethical thinking, poetical thinking, 
teleological, emotional, sentimental thinking, what one 
might call the personal view of life to distinguish it 
from the impersonal and mechanical, and the romantic 
view of life to distinguish it from the rationalistic view, 
have been, and even still are, outside of well-drilled 
scientific circles, the dominant forms of thought. But 
for mechanical rationalism, personality is an insub- 
stantial illusion. The chronic belief of mankind, that 
events may happen for the sake of their personal sig- 
nificance, is an abomination; and the notions of our 
grandfathers about oracles and omens, divinations and 
apparitions, miraculous changes of heart and wonders 
worked by inspired persons, answers to prayer and 
providential leadings, are a fabric absolutely baseless, 
a mass of sheer untruth.. 

Now, of course, we must all admit that the excesses 
to which the romantic and personal view of nature 
may lead, if wholly unchecked by impersonal rational- 
ism, are direful. Central African Mumbo-jumboism 
is one of unchecked romanticism's fruits. One ought 
accordingly to sympathize with that abhorrence of 
romanticism as a sufficient world-theory ; one ought 
to understand that lively intolerance of the least grain 
of romanticism in the views of life of other people, 
which are such characteristic marks of those who 



Psychical Research. 325 

follow the scientific professions to-day. Our debt to 
science is literally boundless, and our gratitude for 
what is positive in her teachings must be correspond- 
ingly immense. But the S. P. R.'s Proceedings have, 
it seems to me, conclusively proved one thing to the 
candid reader ; and that is that the verdict of pure 
insanity, of gratuitous preference for error, of super- 
stition without an excuse, which the scientists of our 
day are led by their intellectual training to pronounce 
upon the entire thought of the past, is a most shallow 
verdict. The personal and romantic view of life has 
other roots besides wanton exuberance of imagination 
and perversity of heart. It is perennially fed by facts 
of experience, whatever the ulterior interpretation of 
those facts may prove to be ; and at no time in human 
history would it have been less easy than now — at 
most times it would have been much more easy — for 
advocates with a little industry to collect in its favor 
an array of contemporary documents as good as those 
which our publications present. These documents all 
relate to real experiences of persons. These experi- 
ences have three characters in common: They are 
capricious, discontinuous, and not easily controlled ; 
they require peculiar persons for their production ; their 
significance seems to be wholly for personal life. Those 
who preferentially attend to them,, and still more those 
who are individually subject to them, not only easily 
may find, but are logically bound to find, in them valid 
arguments for their romantic and personal conception 
of the world's course. Through my slight participa- 
tion in the investigations of the S. P. R. I have become 
acquainted with numbers of persons of this sort, for 
whom the very word ' science ' has become a name 
of reproach, for reasons that I now both understand 



326 Essays in Popular Philosophy. 

and respect. It is the intolerance of science for such 
phenomena as we are studying, her peremptory denial 
either of their existence or of their significance (ex- 
cept as proofs of man's absolute innate folly), that has 
set science so apart from the common sympathies of 
the race. I confess that it is on this, its humanizing 
mission, that the Society's best claim to the gratitude 
of our generation seems to me to depend. It has 
restored continuity to history. It has shown some 
reasonable basis for the most superstitious aberrations 
of the foretime. It has bridged the chasm, healed 
the hideous rift that science, taken in a certain narrow 
way, has shot into the human world. 

I will even go one step farther. When from our 
present advanced standpoint we look back upon the 
past stages of human thought, whether it be scientific 
thought or theological thought, we are amazed that a 
universe which appears to us of so vast and myste- 
rious a complication should ever have seemed to 
any one so little and plain a thing. Whether it be 
Descartes's world or Newton's, whether it be that of 
the materialists of the last century or that of the 
Bridgewater treatises of our own, it always looks the 
same to us, — incredibly perspectiveless and short. 
Even Lyell's, Faraday's, Mill's, and Darwin's con- 
sciousness of their . respective subjects are already 
beginning to put on an infantile and innocent look. 
Is it then likely that the science of our own day will 
escape the common doom ; that the minds of its 
votaries will never look old-fashioned to the grand- 
children of the latter? It would be folly to suppose 
so. Yet if we are to judge by the analogy of the 
past, when our science once becomes old-fashioned, 
it will be more for its omissions of fact, for its igno- 



Psychical Research. 327 

ranee of whole ranges and orders of complexity in 
the phenomena to be explained, than for any fatal 
lack in its spirit and principles. The spirit and prin- 
ciples of science are mere affairs of method ; there 
is nothing in them that need hinder science from deal- 
ing successfully with a world in which personal forces 
are the starting-point of new effects. The only form 
of thing that we directly encounter, the only experi- 
ence that we concretely have, is our own personal life. 
The only complete category of our thinking, our pro- 
fessors of philosophy tell us, is the category of person- 
ality, every other category being one of the abstract 
elements of that. And this systematic denial on sci- 
ence's part of personality as a condition of events, 
this rigorous belief that in its own essential and inner- 
most nature our world is a strictly impersonal world, 
may, conceivably, as the whirligig of time goes round, 
prove to be the very defect that our descendants will 
be most surprised at in our own boasted science, the 
omission that to their eyes will most tend to make it 
look perspectiveless and short. 



INDEX. 



Absolutism, 12, 30, 

Abstract conceptions, 219. 

Action, as a measure of belief, 3, 29-30. 

Actual world narrower than ideal, 202. 

Agnosticism, 54, 81, 126. 

Allen, G., 231, 235, 256. 

Alps, leap in the, 59, 96. 

Alternatives, 156, 161, 202, 269. 

Ambiguity of choice, 156; of being, 

292. 
Anaesthetic revelation, 294. 
A priori truths, 268. 
Apparitions, 311. 
Aristotle, 249. 

Associationism, in Ethics, 186. 
Atheist and acorn, 160. 
Authorities in Ethics, 204; versus 

champions, 207. 
Axioms, 268. 

Bagehot, 232. 

Bain, 71, 91. 

Balfour, 9. 

Being, its character, 142 ; in Hegel, 

281. 
Belief, 59. See < Faith.' 
Bellamy, 188. 
Bismarck, 228. 
Block-universe, 292. 
Blood, B. P., vi, 294. 
Brockton murderer, 160, 177. 
Bunsen, 203, 274. 

Calvinism, 45. 
Carlyle, 42, 44, 45, 73, 87, 173. 
'Casuistic question' in Ethics, 198. 
Causality, 147. 



Causation, Hume's doctrine of, 278. 

Census of hallucinations, 312. 

Certitude, 13, 30. 

Chance, 149, 153-9, 178-180. 

Choice, 156. 

Christianity, 5, 14. 

Cicero, 92. 

City of dreadful night, 35. 

Clark, X., 50. 

Classifications, 67. 

Clifford, 6, 7, 10, 14, 19, 21, 92, 230. 

Clive, 228. 

Clough, 6. 

Common-sense, 270. 

Conceptual order of world, 118. 

Conscience, 186-8. 

Contradiction, as used by Hegel, 275- 

277. 
Contradictions of philosophers, 16. 
Crillon, 62. 
Criterion of truth, 15, 16; in Ethics, 

205. 
Crude order of experience, 118. 
Crystal vision, 314. 
Cycles in Nature, 220, 223-4. 

Darwin, 221, 223, 226, 320. 

Data, 271. 

Davey, 313. 

Demands, as creators of value, 201. 

'Determination is negation,' 286-290. 

Determinism, 150; the Dilemma of, 

145-183; 163, 166; hard and soft, 

149. 
Dogs, 57. 
Dogmatism, 12. 



33° 



Index. 



Doubt, 54, 109. 
Dupery, 27. 

Easy-going mood, 211, 213. 

Elephant, 282. 

Emerson, 23, 175. 

Empiricism, L, 12, 14, 17, 278. 

England, 228. 

Environment, its relation to great men, 

223, 226; to great thoughts, 250. 
Error, 163; duty of avoiding, 18. 
Essence of good and bad, 200-1. 
Ethical ideals, 200. 
Ethical philosophy, 208, 210, 216. 
Ethical standards, 205 ; diversity of, 

200. 
Ethics, its three questions, 185. 
Evidence, objective, 13, 15, 16. 
Evil, 46, 49, 161, 190. 
Evolution, social, 232, 237; mental, 

245. 
Evolutionism, its test of right, 98- 

100. 
Expectancy, 77-80. 
Experience, crude, versus rationalized, 

118 ; tests our faiths, 105. 

Facts, 271. 

Faith, that truth exists, 9, 23 ; in our 
fellows, 24-5 ; school boys' defini- 
tion of, 29; a remedy for pessi- 
mism, 60, 101 ; religious, 56 ; defined, 
90 ; defended against ' scientific ' 
objections, viii-xi, 91-4 ; may cre- 
ate its own verification, 59, 96-103. 

Familiarity confers rationality, 76. 

Fatalism, 88. 

Fiske, 255, 260. 

Fitzgerald, 160. 

Freedom, 103, 271. 

Free-will, 103, 145, 157. 

Galton, 242. 

Geniuses, 226, 229. 

Ghosts, 315. 

Gnosticism, 138-140, 165, 169. 

God, 61, 68 ; of Nature, 43 ; the most 
adequate object for our mind, 116, 
122; our relations to him, 134-6; 



his providence, 182; his demands 

create obligation, 193 ; his function 

in Ethics, 212-215. 
Goethe, in. 
Good, 168, 200, 201. 
Goodness, 190. 

Great-man theory of history, 232. 
Great men and their environment, 

216-254. 
Green, 206. 
Gryzanowski, 240. 
Gurney, 306, 307, 311. 
Guthrie, 309. 
Guyau, 188. 

Hallucinations, Census of, 312. 

Happiness, 33. 

Harris, 282. 

Hegel, 72, 263; his excessive claims, 
272; his use of negation, 273, 290; 
of contradiction, 274, 276 ; on being, 
281 ; on otherness, 283 ; on infin- 
ity, 284; on identity, 285; on de- 
termination, 289; his ontological 
emotion, 297. 

Hegelisms, on some, 263-298. 

Heine, 203. 

Helmholtz, 85, 91. 

Henry IV., 62. 

Herbart, 280. 

Hero-worship, 261, 

Hinton, C. H., 15. 

Hinton, J., 101. 

Hodgson, R., 308. 

Hodgson, S. H., 10. 

Honor, 50. 

Hugo, 213. 

Human mind, its habit of abstracting, 
219. 

Hume on causation, 278. 

Huxley, 6, 10, 92. 

Hypnotism, 302, 309. 

Hypotheses, live or dead, 2; theif 
verification, 105 ; of genius, 249. 

Ideals, 200 ; their conflict, 202. 
Idealism, 89, 291. 
Identity, 285. 
Imperatives, 211. 



Index. 



33 



Importance of individuals, the, 255- 
262 ; of things, its ground, 257. 

Indeterminism, 150. 

Individual differences, 259. 

Individuals, the importance of, 255- 
262. 

Infinite, 284. 

Intuitionism, in Ethics, 186, 189. 

Jevons, 249. 
Judgments of regret, 159. 

Knowing, 12. 
Knowledge, 85. 

Leap on precipice, 59, 96. 

Leibnitz, 43. 

Life, is it worth living, 32-62. 

Maggots, 176-7. 

Mahdi, the, 2, 6. 

Mallock, 32, 183. 

Marcus Aurelius, 41. 

Materialism, 126. 

1 Maybes,' 59. 

Measure of good, 205. 

Mediumship, physical, 313, 314. 

Melancholy, 34, 39, 42. 

Mental evolution, 246; structure, 114, 

117. 
Mill, 234. 
Mind, its triadic structure, 114, 117; 

its evolution, 246 ; its three depart- 
ments, 114, 122, 127-8. 
Monism, 279. 
Moods, the strenuous and the easy, 

211, 213. 
Moralists, objective and subjective, 

103-108. 
Moral judgments, their origin, 1S6-8 ; 

obligation, 192-7 ; order, 193 ; 

philosophy, 184-5. 
Moral philosopher and the moral life. 

the, 184-215. 
Murder, 178. 
Murderer, 160, 177. 
Myers, 308, 315, 320. 
Mystical phenomena, 300. 
Mysticism, 74. 



Naked, the, 281. 

Natural theology, 40-4. 

Nature, 20, 41-4, 56. 

Negation, as used by Hegel, 273. 

Newman, 10. 

Nitrous oxide, 294. 

Nonentity, 72. 

Objective evidence, 13, 15, 16. 

Obligation, 192-7. 

Occult phenomena, 300 ; examples of, 

323- 
Omar Khayam, 160. 
Optimism, 60, 102, 163. 
Options offered to belief, 3, 11, 27. 
Origin of moral judgments, 186-8. 
' Other,' in Hegel, 283. 

Parsimony, law of, 132. 

Partaking, 268, 270, 275, 291. 

Pascal's wager, 5, 11. 

Personality, 324, 327. 

Pessimism, 39, 40, 47, 60, 100, ioi, 
161, 167. 

Philosophy, 65 ; depends on personal 
demands, 93 ; makes world unreal, 
39 ; seeks unification, 67-70 ; the 
ultimate, no; its contradictions, 16. 

Physiology, its prestige, 112. 

Piper, Mrs., 314, 319. 

Plato, 268. 

Pluralism, vi, 151, 178, 192, 264, 267. 

Positivism, 54, 108. 

Postulates, 91-2. 

Possibilities, 151, 181-2, 292, 294. 

Powers, our powers as congruous with 
the world, 86. 

Providence, 180. 

Psychical research, what it has ac- 
complished, 299-327; Society for 

3°3> 3°5> 325- 
Pugnacity, 49, 51. 

Questions, three, in Ethics, 185. 

Rationalism, 12, 30. 

Rationality, the sentiment of, 63-110; 
limits of theoretic, 65-74 ; mystical, 
74 ; practical, 82-4 ; postulates of, 
152. 



33* 



Index. 



Rational order of world, 118, 125, 147. 
Reflex action and theism, 111-144. 
Reflex action defined, 113; it refutes 

gnosticism, 140-1. 
Regret, judgments of, 159. 
Religion, natural, 52; of humanity, 

198. 
Religious hypothesis, 25, 28, 51. 
Religious minds, 40. 
Renan, 170, 172. 
Renouvier, 143. 
Risks of belief or disbelief, ix, 26 ; 

rules for minimizing, 94. 
Romantic view of world, 324. 
Romanticism, 172-3. 
Rousseau, 4, 33, 87. 
Ruskin, ^7- 

Salter, 62. 

Scepticism, 12, 23, 109. 

Scholasticism, 13. 

Schopenhauer, 72, 169. 

Science, 10, 21 ; its recency, 52-4 ; 

due to peculiar desire, 129-132, 147; 

its disbelief of the occult, 317-320; 

its negation of personality, 324-6 ; 

cannot decide question of determi- 
nism, 152. 
Science of Ethics, 208-210. 
Selection of great men, 226. 
Sentiment of rationality, 63. 
Seriousness, 86. 
Shakespeare, 32, 235. 
Sidgwick, 303, 307. 
Sigwart, 120, 148. 
Society for psychical research, 303 ; its 

1 Proceedings,' 305, 325. 
Sociology, 259. 
Solitude, moral, 191. 
Space, 265. 
Spencer, 168, 218, 232-235, 246, 251, 

260. 
Stephen, L., 1. 
Stephen, Sir J., t, 30, 212. 
Stoics, 274. 

Strenuous mood, 211, 213. 
Subjectivism, 165, 170. 



1 Subliminal self,' 315, 321. 

Substance, 80. 

Suicide, 38, 50, 60. 

System in philosophy, 13, 185, 199. 

Telepathy, 10, 309. 
Theism, and reflex action, 1 11-144. 
Theism, 127, 134-6 ; see ' God.' 
Theology, natural, 41 ; Calvinistic, 45. 
Theoretic faculty, 128. 
Thought-transference, 309. 
Thomson, 35-7, 45, 46. 
Toleration, 30. 
Tolstoi, 188. 

' Totality/ the principle of, 277. 
Triadic structure of mind, 123. 
Truth, criteria of, 15 ; and error, 18 j 
moral, 190-1. 

Unitarians, 126, 133. 
Unknowable, the, 68, 81. 
Universe — M -f- x, 101 ; its ration- 
ality, 125, 137. 
Unseen world, 51, 54, 56, 61. 
Utopias, 168. 

Value, judgments of, 103. 

Variations, in heredity, etc., 225, 249. 

Vaudois, 48. 

Veddah, 258. 

Verification of theories, 95, 105-8. 

Vivisection, 58. 

Waldenses, 47-9. 

Wallace, 239, 304. 

Whitman, 33, 64, 74. 

Wordsworth, 60. 

World, its ambiguity, 76 ; the invisible, 

51, 54, 56 ; two orders of, 118, 
Worth, judgments of, 103. 
Wright, 52. 

X., Miss, 314. 

Zola, 172. 
Zollner, 15. 






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